


Coming to America

by Samarkand12



Category: Girl Genius, Historical RPF
Genre: F/M, Gilded Age, Historical, SCIENCE!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 13:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 27,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13742286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samarkand12/pseuds/Samarkand12
Summary: Something goes very wrong in Castle Heterodyne when Agatha tries the final act of the Si Vales procedure.  She finds herself in a world both familiar and very alien.So she does what so many do in this time: immigrates to America.





	1. Chapter 1

Midnight, June 1st/2nd 1892, Belgrade  
  
Nikola Tesla could not sleep.  
  
That was not a new thing for him. For much of his life, sleep had eluded him. He never understood why others needed it. The night was the best time, when the ideas came. There always was a price to be paid. Yet he had survived worse: arriving in America with almost all his possessions stolen, Edison cheating him, digging ditches to fund his work. Now he was here in Belgrade at the request of the people and the king. That was pleasant and--not to tell a lie--rather gratifying. But it was all so distracting.  
  
Standing by the window of his hotel, Tesla stared up at the stars and wondered what made them burn.  
  
Light.  
  
The sky to the north lit up with a powerful aurora. Tesla's hair stood up on end as a massive electrical charge surged through the atmosphere. One portion of his mind calculated amperage and voltage and resonant frequencies. The other watched in awe as a pillar of coruscating fire danced to the northeast. It was akin to the sign which guided the ancient Hebrews through the desert. Could it be a rare natural phenomenon that had inspired the writers of the Scriptures?  
  
Transfixed, Nikola Tesla watched the aurora as the world silently changed.  
  
++++  
  
Midnight, June 1st/June 2nd, a remote valley in Transylvania  
  
Darkness returned to the valley after the searing light.  
  
Silence reigned through the fold in the mountains. The valley had never been populated for long despite the defensible hill by the river. The peasantry had always muttered darkly of the cursed spring that brought madness to anyone foolish enough to drink from it. Certainly, no Szekeler noble had ever claimed it for very long. The lords who tried to establish a domain on the hill paid for it with madness and strange diseases that afflicted the family line. Now, even the animals and birds had fled from the fury which had culminated in a massive bolt of lightning that had seared the top of the hill.  
  
In the darkness, there was a flash of red-gold.  
  
"G-Gil?"  
  
A hand scrabbled about in the dirt.  
  
"Tarvek? Moloch? Violetta?"  
  
Moonlight fell upon pale skin.  
  
"Wh-where am I? Where's the castle?"  
  
A gasp and a sudden flurry of movement.  
  
"AND WHY AM I NAKED AGAIN?"

++++

Agatha Heterodyne cradled her head in her hands. For most of her life, she had suffered terrible headaches inflicted by the locket her uncle had made to suppress her Spark. She would have welcomed the spike of a migraine ripping through her frontal lobes. Anything to dispel the numbness that fogged her mind. What had happened? The last she could recall, there had been a moment of clarity. Absolute clarity, though the details escaped her right now. There had been Tarvek and Gil who-- Had they been sick? Something involving pink? Really annoying pink. Yes, they had been sick. She had been about to cure them. And then there had been fire and energy and so many possibilities coursing through her mind. Something had gone wrong.  
  
_Ce naiba_ , where was she? Agatha squinted at the surrounding landscape. Without her glasses, she couldn't see clearly past a couple of meters. The valley looked more or less like the country around Mechanicsburg. The hill she had stumbled--and fallen off of, a few times--was in the general shape of the rise Castle Heterodyne sat upon. But there was no sign this place had ever been inhabited. No houses, no walls aside from a ruined tower on the hill, no road running by the river. Correction: there wasn't a river running on the floor of the valley. It was as if the town had never existed.  
  
Deep in her mind, alarms began to blare as half-coherent scraps from her mother's imprisoned psyche flashed through her brain. Transdimensional harmonics and power spikes and portals-- Mother! Agatha's hands flew to the front of her throat. No locket! _Her locket wasn't on to suppress her mother_! Agatha frantically glanced up at the mountain. It must have fallen off on the peak, if it had even made the transition at all. How long did she have before Lucrezia awoke? A day? An hour? Agatha hummed. At least, she tried to. The complex, atonal hum that focused her mind against distractions and Lucrezia's influence wouldn't come. She couldn't heterodyne. Even under the locket's influence, she used to managed a little before the locket clamped down.  
  
She pounded a fist against the ground. Tears trickled down her cheeks. Where was she? Where were her friends? What had happened to her? Where were her verdammt clothes? How could this possibly get any worse?  
  
A twig snapped behind her.  
  
Agatha turned about to see the astonished soldier standing behind her.  
  
Of course it could. Silly her.  
  
++++  
  
Good news: she hadn't yet turned into a mad undead genius, bent on enslaving Europa with mind-controlling insects  
  
Bad news: she was still naked except for horse-blankets clutched about her.  
  
Agatha rode side-saddle in the midst of the detachment of soldiers who had discovered her. They wore grey uniforms with black plumed hats upon their heads; a flaming grenade badge on their hats proclaimed them to be from some sort of grenadier regiment. What was strange was the omission of either the Heterodyne trilobite or the Wulfenbach winged keep anywhere. Even stranger was that they spoke Magyar among themselves. Romanian had been the common tongue of the Wulfenbach Empire ever since the Baron had established his rule. Saxons and Szekeler spoke their respective languages amongst themselves, and of course German was preferred among the educated classes. Still, the soldiers in Wulfenbach lands usually spoke the empire's official language.  
  
Staring straight ahead, Agatha ignored the less-than-complimentary words of the soldiers as they chatted among themselves. It was as if they expected she couldn't speak Magyar. Well, she had babbled in her best/worst ignorant peasant accent. Months of acting training with Master Payne's Circus had given her a fair ability to mimic accents, though she couldn't compare with the rest of the troupe. Only the fog in her head kept her internal boilers from exploding as they talked about what they thought of crazy peasant girls who ran around the countryside without a stitch on their backs. Keep your temper. She had to keep her temper, even _though it was so tempting to grab that bayonet from that ignorant pig of a corporal and conduct an impromptu dissection exercise._  
  
Agatha hunched further beneath the blankets when they came out of the winding path through the woods. Oh joy--a village full of hearty rural lads who were all too eager to find a naked woman paraded through the hamlet's single street. Older woman hissed and made the sign of the evil eye as Agatha and her escorts passed. They brought her into a small building with a stables and outbuildings attached. To Agatha's infinite relief, a peasant woman with the beefy red face of a cook rushed in with a simple dress. It was slightly on the small side and itched. But it would do. Agatha did her best to adjust it as best she could before a man in the same uniform as her escort stepped in.  
  
"Multumesc," Agatha said.  
  
"We have to maintain pubic decency." Trimmed moustache, snarky tone, educated accent: an official, subgenus officious. "What were you running around the back country without any clothes on?"  
  
"I--I don't know." Agatha channeled as much as Pix's Confused Peasant Wench as she could. "I think I went into the woods to pick mushrooms. There was such a light--"  
  
"You saw it?" The officer asked.  
  
"No. Just light." Agatha massaged her temple. "Everything is so hard to remember. Where am I? Is this the Baron Wulfenbach's lands?"  
  
"Wulfenbach? Never heard of him."  
  
No. That wasn't possible.  
  
"This is not Transyvlania, in his Empire?" Agatha stammered with more realism than she intended.  
  
"You are in Transylvania, in the Kingdom of Hungary," the officer said. "But the only emperor is his Imperial and Royal Highness Franz Joseph the First, by whose Royal Hungarian Gendarmes have taken you into custody. Now, girl, where are you from?"  
  
"Farther away than you can think," Agatha said, staring into the distance. "Farther away than you can dream is possible."


	2. Chapter 2

Nikola Tesla strode along the path leading to the suspected focus point of the Event. Dust coated his shoes and his pants legs. He resisted as best he could the urge to brush off the filth. Disgusting. Ridden with germs. He would have to have these laundered when he returned to what passed for civilization in this region. The walk itself was no hardship to a man who walked ten miles--exactly ten, no more, no less--every morning. He ignored the helpful comments of the ignoramus of a lieutenant escorting the party to the valley. The opinions of a country policeman were beneath him.   
  
When they reached the valley, Nikola was stunned by the devastation wrought by the Event. Yes, this had to be the site where it had struck the earth. Patches of rock in the surrounding mountains several square meters in area had been flash-melted by what had to be branching discharges. All around were charred trees shattered like matchsticks. His cavalry escorts had to leave their horses behind, or else risk breaking a mount's leg between toppled trunks. The red-blonde peasant girl who had accompanied them as the sole witness handled the trek to central hill with typical rustic endurance. Nikola did not put much hope in her contribution. He had heard the gendarmes' comments on an addled nature.  
  
There was a rough path leading to the hilltop. The rest of the party stayed behind while he examined the flat area. Strange. One would have thought the violence of the electrical discharge would have created some evidence of the energies focused here. Based on the effects of the secondary strikes, it would have made the stone bubble and melt. Instead, there was only a circular area a few inches wide of darkened rock. It was as if the base of the column of electrical fire had formed a bubble. What had gone on here? Some sort of ball lightning event?   
  
The tip of his shoe overturned a stone, sending it clattering off the edge of the cliff. Gold flashed in the sunlight. Curious, Nikola picked up the locket wedged into a crack in the ground. The case was fashioned into a shellfish. His eidetic memory dredged up a chance reading of a paleontological article. It was a trilobite. Now that he thought of it, there were many of them embedded in the stone all around. This hill must have been a sea once eons ago. They were standing upon a fossil bed. Within the piece of jewellery were scorched pictures of a man and woman. The damage made it hard to see their features, though the woman had golden hair. Hmmm.  
  
The seam at the back portion had popped open.  
  
Prising it open, Nikola peered into some sort of clockwork--  
  
"My locket!" the peasant girl cried out, in German.  
  
"Get back, you silly chit!" Lieutenant Kozma shouted.  
  
"No, it is fine." Nikola polished the outer casing with a kerchief. "This is yours, Fraulein..."  
  
"Heterodyne. Agatha Heterodyne," the girl replied in educated Deutsche. "It was made for me by my uncle. I thought I'd lost it."  
  
"Your uncle was a gifted mechanic." Nikola gazed at the ruined, delicate mechanisms within the locket. Were those tuning forks. "Brilliant. Even I have no idea what these are for."  
  
"Herr Tesla is an engineer?" the girl asked.  
  
"I have some skill in the field of electrical engineering," Nikola said, a sly smile flickering beneath his dapper moustache. "Although I doubt word of my work has reached into these regions. I was lecturing in Zagreb and Belgrade when the imperial authorities asked me to investigate."  
  
"You teach in Vienna, then," Agatha said.  
  
"No, I am an American citizen."   
  
"The Americas?" Agatha gasped. "They have civilization?"  
  
"Many Europeans might not think so," Nikola smiled. "But it is a land of great opportunity and energy. My citizenship is the greatest honor I have ever received."  
  
"The Americas," Agatha breathed. "Pardon my interruption, Herr Tesla."  
  
"Perhaps you might venture an explanation?" Nikola offered.  
  
"I...think not," Agatha said, sotto voce. "It is not wise to seem too intelligent here. Especially if one is a woman."  
  
"Of course," Nikola said.   
  
How disappointing, actually. This Agatha was quite a surprise. Nikola did not press the point, though. If she was here and hiding her light beneath a bushel, she might have reasons to fear discovery. Fleeing an arranged engagement, legal problems, hiding from a shameful relationship--there were many possibilities. It was not his place to pry. Reluctantly, he handed the locket back to its rightful owner. She clasped it at her throat with more relief than he expected. Another mystery piled atop the others.  
  
Nikola took notes of what evidence had been left behind. It was near noon by the time he was finished. He had no urge to sup with the lieutenant; the idea of eating from the local kitchens made him quite ill at the prospect. The curiously-educated "peasant girl" had faded into the background after their brief conversation. Pity. He would have liked to say farewell. But then Kozma might assume that Nikola had an...interest. Nikola's gorge rose at the idea of the oaf offering her like some kitchen utensil. No. Not that she wasn't comely, though definitely of robust build. But he wasn't interested in her like that. He had long ago married himself to his great work. Women were good company, but were distractions nonetheless.  
  
Nikola drummed his fingers on the frame of the coach, three times three.  
  
A pity she was stuck there.  
  
+++  
  
"Agatha!" Anastasia called out. "Package for you!"  
  
"Eh?" Agatha wiped her hands on her apron.  
  
"It came in with the rest of the mail for the post." Anastasia smirked. "That bastard officer wanted to open it up for inspection, but I know you can't interfere in the imperial mails without a warrant."  
  
"I wonder who it's from," Agatha said. "I don't know anyone outside the village."  
  
"A lover you forgot?" Anastasia teased.  
  
"No. Anyone I had interest in is...far away."  
  
Agatha untied the string and tore away the paper.  
  
"Tools?" Anastasia asked. "What would a woman want with tools?"  
  
"I can think of a few things," Agatha said, wonderingly folding out the velvet protecting the delicate watchmaker's tool set.   
  
"Your lover sent you a letter," Anastasia said, waving the envelope within.  
  
"Give me that!" Agatha snatched it away, tearing it open.  
  
_Fraulein Heteordyne:_  
  
_I think you are wasted in this village. Long ago, I left behind my home to seek opportunities where my skills would best benefit mankind. Perhaps you might find some success in the same way. I send you a work on basic mechanics, and something to help you on your way. I wish you well._  
  
_Nikola Tesla_  
  
"By damn!" Anastasia exclaimed. "A ticket for a Hamburg-America steamer, too. There's many in the village who'd kill for that-- Hey, where are you going?"  
  
"Out of here." Agatha already had her other dress and few possessions wrapped up in a bundle. "Away. To America!"  
  
"No money?" Anastasia shook her head. "How will you pay for a train ticket?"  
  
"I'll damn well walk!" Under her breath came an odd, complex hum. "I can cook, I can fix watches, I can play the piano. I'll tell fortunes in the streets if I have to."  
  
"Good luck!" Anastasia called out, as Agatha ran out to the road leading out to the village.  
  
Dust spiraled up beneath her heels as Agatha Heterodyne picked a direction and _went_. 


	3. Chapter 3

Confluence of the Olt and Danube Rivers, late July 1892  
  
Captain Dragan had a problem. His watch didn't work. Well, he had a few others. The cantankerous steam engine of his paddlewheel steamer had finally committed suicide. His idiotic son-in-law who pretended to be an engineer had scarpered off somewhere with a bottle of slivovitz. He had a barge full of cargo to tow. There was no way his vessel could handle an upstream fight against the Iron Gate. Right now, the fact his damn pocket watch was now more useful as an anchor than a timepiece was enough problems for now.  
  
"I can fix that," came a voice from the river bank.  
  
"You can, eh?" Dragan arched one bushy brow at the girl on the river bank. "And what would a peasant girl know about watches?"  
  
"Give it to me and see."  
  
What the hell, he might as well. If she ended up stealing it, at least she'd have to pawn a busted watch.  
  
The blonde peasant girl in travel stained clothes caught the watch and sat crosslegged on the bank.  
  
A roll of velvet unfolded.  
  
Dragan's eyebrows rose to his battered cap as tools worked with precision and skill.  
  
"Will this be enough to buy me passage?" the girl said, tossing the watch back.  
  
"It would, if you can fix engines." Dragan wound his watch. Damned if it didn't tick. "I'm bound for Belgrade. But if you can fix the piece of trash in the engine room, I'll take you as far as I'm able."  
  
"Excellent!"  
  
++++  
  
Budapest, late August 1892  
  
"Good luck to you, Agatha," Dragan said, handing the girl small purse of kroner. "I hope you do well in America. I wish you could stay on, for all the others talk about a woman engineer."  
  
"It's been an education," Agatha replied. "But as much as I've enjoyed the river life, I must go."  
  
"Where are you bound next?" Dragan really would miss her. She made the best coffee.   
  
"I'm not sure." A bittersweet smile flickered over her features. "I might stop by Paris. An old friend of mine loved it there."  
  
++++  
  
Moulin Rouge, Paris, mid-September 1892  
  
Agatha clutched her skirts close. Mein Gott, how did she end up here? All she had thought when stopping by here was a chance to earn a little extra money playing the piano. But apparently a girl had gotten sick, and Herr Zidler had decided they needed a quick replacement for the review, and-- The music started. Agatha closed her eyes as the rest of the dancers prepared to take the floor.  
  
Everyone later decided that it was the best Can-Can perfomance to date.  
  
++++  
  
Cafe, Paris, early October 1892  
  
"Pardon, madmoiselle," the man said, "but I couldn't help noticing your drawings."  
  
"Oh, these things?" Agatha sipped a cup of tea. "They're some conceptual sketches. Nothing fancy."  
  
"I've always dreamed of flight." The man in the high-collared shirt and fine clothes sat opposite her. "These airships of yours seem to have stepped out of Monsieur Verne's novels."  
  
"I'm glad you think so. Aeronautics isn't really my field." Agatha smiled This was so much more enjoyable than dancing at that club!   
  
"I would be honoured if you would grant me some of your time.." The man tipped his hat. "I am Alberto Santos-Dumont."  
  
"Agatha Heterodyne."  
  
++++  
  
_Furst Bismarck_ , docks of Hamburg, November 1892  
  
Agatha stood at the foot of the gangplank. Before her climbed the ranks of immigrant passengers filing into the steerage ranks below decks. In one hand, she had a carpet bag full of her small wardrobe and sundries. In the other, a case full of books and tools. Alberto had been so generous. She probably should have stayed in Paris with him, as he had begged. Gil was right. It was truly a city of culture and delight. But, no. She had promised herself that she would see America. She had to make her own way.   
  
"Ticket?"  
  
"Oh? Yes." Agatha handed the ticket to the man at the top of the gangplank.  
  
Turning her head, she looked back at the Old World.  
  
Time to see what opportunities the New One held for her.  
  
++++  
  
_Furst Bismarck,_ eight days later  
  
Agatha was never, ever taking an ocean trip again.  
  
In fact, she was going to develop airship travel to prevent anyone from going through this hell!  
  
She sprawled in her steerage-class bunk as she fought down another wave of sea-sickness. She had been suffering it ever since the ship gone ten kilometers from shore. Matters weren't helped by the rumbles from the engine rooms forward of the third-class women's accomodations. She couldn't even distract herself by examining the machinery; unlike Kapiten Dragan, the black gang of the _Furst Bismarck_ did not want any woman poking around their domain. Combined with the poor food and the storm they'd hit mid-crossing, it had not been a happy voyage at all.  
  
Agatha listened to the women chattering all around her. They came from all over Europe. Most were Germans. But there were several Norwegians and Swedes, a few from the hinterlands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and several Russian Jewish girls fleeing the pogroms. Everyone was talking about America. Some asked if the streets were truly paved with gold. Others wondered if there would still be the jobs their relatives had written about. America was all things to them: a place of refuge, a promise of plenty, a promise of something new.  
  
More importantly, it was a place off this damned ship.  
  
A whisper ran through the crowd. They were being allowed on deck. Clutching her stomach, Agatha followed the throng heading upwards. At least she might finally get some fresh air. Her nausea lessened when she came up through the hatch. Ach. Paradise. She rubbed clean the glasses she had bought in Budapest before boarding the train. It had been such a relief to be able to see clearly again. Stretching her arms wide, Agatha glanced to starboard over the ship's rail.  
  
And looked up. And up.  
  
Before her was a titan raising her torch to the skies, a queen with a crown upon her head, gazing down at the poor women huddled on the deck with solemn welcome.  
  
++++  
  
Ellis Island, November 1892  
  
Twelve lines shuffled through the great hall built of pine. Languages from all across Europe echoed off the buff-painted walls.  
  
She stepped to the front, before the man behind the desk.  
  
"Name?"  
  
"Agatha Heterodyne."  
  
"Age?"  
  
"19."  
  
"Sex?"  
  
"Er." Agatha glanced down. "I believe it would be hard to say anything other than female--"  
  
"Just answer the questions."  
  
"Sorry, long voyage. Occupation? Draftswoman and piano player...I can read and write...New York City...Not an anarchist...NOT a polygamist..."  
  
At the end of the twenty nine questions, a stamp hit paper and a certificate handed over the desk.  
  
"That's it?"  
  
"Yes. Welcome to America, Miss Heterodyne. Next!" 


	4. Chapter 4

  
Lower East Side, 1892  
  
"A dollar and a half a month," Mrs. Schraff said, "hot bath privileges once a week, we don't offer board, and no men past the front door."  
  
"It seems, um, adequate," Agatha said.  
  
"I mean it about the men," Mrs. Schraff said. "This isn't a bawdy house. If there's any of that business about, it happens in the alley outside."  
  
"How good I have you to guard the morality the community," Agatha said. Out of sight, her hands squeezed the handle of her carpet bag.  
  
"This is a good, Christian house," Mrs. Schraff said. "Also, you're not a Jew, are you? I can usually tell if they try to pass. They have a smell to them."  
  
"I am--" Agatha paused. "Lutheran?"  
  
"Good." Mrs. Schraff sniffed. "Too many yids are moving in, from Galicia and who knows where else. That'll be first and last month's rent, payable up front."  
  
Agatha counted out three dollar bills into Mrs. Schraff's palm. The pleasant smile stayed on her lips until she was sure the landlady was out of sight. Mein Gott, what an ogre! To think that woman could openly spout such uneducated prejudices as if they were a point of pride. Anti-semitism and such were unheard of in the settled cities of Europa. Constructs and madboys and madgirls drew the ire of townspeople, not trifling differences of religion or natural skin color. Even in peasant villages, a Jew would normally be considered an equal. One's place of worship mattered little when all hands were needed to deal with a horror coming out of the Wastelands.  
  
Still, she needed the room. This city was a hive. In her travels through Europe, Agatha had seen how small even Mechanicsburg was like in a continent that didn't have to deal with the Long War. Millions lived in Paris, thronging the streets with unbelievable traffic. New York City was another matter entirely. Everyone seemed determined to squeeze in as many possible into the narrow confines of Manhattan. The streets were a mob of horse-drawn trams, wagons, motor-cars, and pedestrians trying to stay alive amid the tumult. The tenements lining the block on either side of Schraff's lodging house had hundreds of women and children outside. How could they fit them all into these narrrow buildings?  
  
So this was her home. Agatha sat down on the mattress of the single bed that took up most of the room. There were no other furnishings. Nails driven in the wall were all that were provided to store her clothing. There was no window. Her room was one of three that had to have been carved out of the attic--the wall to one side sloped down considerably--without the dubious advantage of a window opening out onto the street or the narrow yard behind the house. No wonder so many peope were outside. In summer, this place would be stifling. The only bathroom was three floors down. Um. Agatha looked under the bed. Good. At least the expected porcelain amenity had been cleaned out by the previous occupant.  
  
It wasn't much. It wasn't even Baba Yaga. But it would do until she could better herself. America was the land of opportunity, wasn't it? It was why she had not accepted Alberto's offer of support. She knew what that meant in polite Parisian society: a kept woman. Agatha Heterodyne would never be a pawn ever again. America seemed to be where you could make your own fate. She had read the tales of Herr Edison's rise from poverty to success, and Herr Tesla landing on its shores with only four cents in his pocket. She could speak and write nine languages. She had excellent technical skills. Failing that? Well, some people would want piano or dancing lessons.  
  
And, in time...  
  
Agatha lit the oil lamp hanging from its hook in the ceiling. She opened her other carpet bag. It was the one that clinked. Taking off her glasses, she screwed a jeweller's loupe in one eye. Out of a padded box came her Project. It was an egg of brass with two "eyes" with blue lenses and four limbs. A tiny crown rested atop it. The one side hinged up to reveal a complex mechanism of gears and springs. Steeling herself, Agatha hummed quietly so as not to disturb the others through the thin walls on either side. Sweat beaded her brow as she concentrated. She tried to reach for that state of focus that she had known. Yes, _according to the notes of Van Rijn that she had memorized the correct placement would be--_  
  
 _would_ be-  
  
-be--  
  
Ce naida.  
  
She had almost had it that time.  
  
++++  
  
"I'm sorry, but a woman machinist? Don't waste my time."  
  
"But if you just give me a chance too--"  
  
"The shop floor is no place for a girl."  
  
++++  
  
"I'm afraid we can't hire you."  
  
"But--"  
  
"It's your accent. It would bring down the tone of this establishment if we had a shopgirl who obviously wasn't American."  
  
++++  
  
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, YOU FILTHY PIG! THAT WASN'T THE 'MODELING' I WAS EXPECTING!"  
  
++++  
  
Agatha sat before the sewing machine.  
  
On either side, dozens of young women worked furiously at their machines in the shirtwaist factory.  
  
She sighed and drew the first piece through the machine.  
  
Maybe she should have stayed in Paris. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Altman's Fashions, Late November, 1892  
  
*WHIR WHIR*  
  
It was best to make believe she was a clank. Agatha mentally wrote a simple sewing script.  
  
*WHIR WHIR*  
  
She was paid so much per piece. She had to produce so many pieces or be fired.  
  
*WHIR WHIR*  
  
She had to earn so much per month for rent, meals--  
  
*WHIR WHIR*  
  
This was even more boring than peeling beets. Idiots. Why, _she could construct an entire factory floor if her Spark worked and they gave her access to--_  
  
*WHIR CLUNK*  
  
" _ **Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"**_  
  
++++  
  
Moishe Altman listened to the sound of money being printed, in the form of hundreds of needles stitching their way through fabric. The goyim would say that it was all that, as a Jew, he cared about. Mr. Altman would say that knowing the value of a dollar had served him well indeed. Running a so-called sweatshop wasn't easy, whatever the meshugennah anarchists and socialists said. There was only so much margin for profit in cheap shirtwaists and dresses. The women were cold in the winter? Coal costs. They could put on a coat. He put down poison and traps for the rats. Half the time he was here long after they had all gone, poring over the books.  
  
Long hours? They were here to work. If the Galicianers and Italians who worked at his machines didn't like it? They could go back and dodge Cossacks or squat beneath an olive tree in Sicily. Nu, it was hard all over. Moishe rubbed the stump where his left arm had taken a Minie ball in the elbow a week before Appomatox Courthouse. Life wasn't fair. He toted up the sums and debits on the bottom of the page. Not too bad. Macy's still owed him for half of September's shipment, but he expected them to pay up on time. Sales were still good. He might just get those pearls for Hannah.  
  
Amid the symphony of sewing machines, Moishe picked out the tell-tale clunk of a jammed machine. That shlemiel Irishman he paid to keep the machines going must have gotten drunk instead of doing his job. The putz! Through the frosted glass of his door came cursing in German and at least two other languages. Moishe hurried out. Anyone who took Hashem's name in vain like that would be out of a job. The offending woman was hunched over her machine swearing a blue streak. He vaguely remembered seeing her red-gold hair bent over among a sea of brown and black tresses.  
  
Silvery metal flashed as she reached deep into the machine's guts.  
  
Still muttering imprecations, she bolted her sewing machine's casing shut and went back to work. Moishe's eyebrows rose high to his balding hairline as he listened to it. The thing hummed as if it had come new right from the factory, instead of the reconditioned model he'd bought from that goniff who had flogged these machines to him. Already she was catching up with the others in spite of losing a minute repairing her own machine herself.  
  
Moishe Altman knew very well the value of a dollar, and how it all came down to nickles and pennies in the end.  
  
"Come to the office," he said to her. "We should talk."  
  
++++  
  
December 24th, 1892  
  
"Merry Christmas, Miss Heterodyne," Mr. Altman said, handing her a package wrapped in festive paper.  
  
"Won't you be in trouble for that?" Agatha said, closing the accounts ledger.   
  
"I'll daven very hard on Yom Kippur," the portly owner of Altman fashions replied. He hefted a bottle. "Schnapps?"  
  
"One glass for the occasion," Agatha said, taking one from her boss. "I hope you don't think you can take advantage of me this way. I've traveled with actors. They trained me to resist the demon alcohol."  
  
"That much grief I don't need," Mr. Altman said. "Rivkah would hate to lose her piano teacher."  
  
"Your daughter has talent," Agatha said, opening her present. "You should send her to a conservatory-- Oh! Herr Altman, you're too generous."  
  
"Not at all," Altman said. "Feinberg has had this in his pawn shop for months. He was glad to be rid of it."  
  
"I don't have a license," Agatha said, opening the doctor's black bag.   
  
"I think G-d has a plan for you, Agatha." He downed the last of his schnapps. "You've talked about your medical training. If you're half as good as that as a mechanic, any patient of yours will be in good hands."  
  
"Would Hannah be betrayed if I gave you a kiss on the cheek?" Agatha asked.  
  
"Perhaps she would be fine with one dance from a lovely girl."  
  
Herr Altman danced very well for a man with only one and a half arms. They waltzed chastely as the snow fell outside the window. He even kissed her hand before shrugging on coat and hat. Agatha sat in the office, watching him head towards the Second Avenue El for the ride home to his family. It wouldn't take her long to close up. She picked through the contents of the black bag in her lap. The surgical instruments inside were almost new. It might have been a medical student who had to pawn them for tuition, or a doctor who had gambled or drunk too much. Never mind. They were hers.  
  
It wasn't a bad job. She was paid half of what a man would make for maintaining the sewing machines. Altman had justified it saying she didn't have a family to support. Well, a salary was better than piece-work. Doing the accounts was easy enough. She had learned how to do it helping Lilith at Clay Mechanical. It all came down to math. Herr Altman was a good boss who didn't have...expectations of what a single nineteen year old secretary should do in addition to her regular duties. Agatha had heard a fair few stories from the women on the shop floor about overseers and owners who made such demands. He was sparing enough with the coal, but that was why she'd designed a new heating system for Altman Fashions.  
  
Agatha wound the scarf knitted by Miss Cotroni around her neck. She buttoned up her coat--second-hand, but warm and well taken care of. She patted a pocket on the right side. New York City had more than its share of crime. A young woman had to be practical. She wasn't sure it would work, though. Locking up the shop, Agatha seated a hat firmly atop her head before stepping out. It would be a brisk walk back to the ogre's lair. No, that was unfair. Whatever her landlady's opinions about Herr Altman's people, the woman had been generous enough to let Agatha work on certain projects in the little shed behind the boarding house.   
  
"Give it up, you fucking yid!"  
  
A pained cry came from an alley.  
  
Agatha's hand dove into her coat pocket. What came out has started out as the frame of a broken Smith and Wesson top-break revolver. The cylinder and barrel had been removed. In their place had been a small spring-driven dynamo, several parts salvaged from a telephone receiver, and other odd bits and bops she had acquired. The altered "Lemon Squeezer" whined as the grip safety closed a certain circuit.  
  
She dove towards the alley.  
  
"Someone coming to the rescue," a burly man with a bowler hat said, cosh in hand. "Why, if it isn't a little lady. I can think of a few things I could do with a yid bitch up against--"  
  
"Agatha," Mr. Altman said, writhing on the ground, "run, this Cossack bastard--"  
  
_"No. **You have one chance to run yourself. No one hurts my friends."**_  
  
++++  
  
"Thanks for coming out," Thomas Byrnes said, handkerchief over his mouth and nose. "Jaysus, what a thing to find on a fine Christmas Eve."  
  
"I am accustomed to working late, Detective," Nikola replied. "When my father sent me into the mountains to avoid service in the army, I saw things much like this. There was much fighting at the time."  
  
"Used to patrol the Five Points." Inspector Byrnes gestured at the charred corpse. "Seen my share of butchery at Bull Run. I never saw anything like this."  
  
"It is as if he were struck by lightning." Nikola examined the melted edges of the hole in the alley wall. "This is more coherent. It has similarities to my experiments with my button lamps. The effect is far more intense than what I have been able to achieve."  
  
"Freak lightning strike." Byrnes nodded. "That'll do."  
  
"Are you not curious about what happened here?" Nikola said.  
  
"This was Butcher McGee." Byrnes waved at the body with a hole the size of a cannonball in its chest. "No one maybe except a few Bowery whores gave two shites about him in this life. The only one in the next who'll care has a pitchfork ready to shove up his arse. Good riddance to him."  
  
"You are of course in charge of the investigation," Nikola said. Already his mind was whirling with calculations and hypotheses. "Would you mind if I stayed a while, to further examine this 'lightning strike'?"  
  
"Be my guest." Byrne walked a few steps and shook his head. "Merry Christmas, and to all a good night." 


	6. Chapter 6

Tick tock.  
  
Needles clicked while Helga Schraff worked on her knitting by the light of an oil lamp. A _weihnachtsbaum_ stood in one corner of her parlour, decorated with glass ornaments and lit candles. Several presents were already under the tree. Most of them had been sent by post from her many children. God bless them, they were all successful. Nothing like her good-for-nothing husband. Although for some reason they all settled in cities and towns at least a hundred miles away from New York. Well, they sent in money like good children should for a "widow" who had only her rooming house to rely on. None of the presents were from her boarders.  
  
Except for one.  
  
Helga glanced out the front window. The lace curtains had been pulled aside, for the best view of the street. She usually had them open. All the better to ensure she could see any guest bringing in trouble. She wouldn't have any immoral goings-on in her house. Knit two, purl two. No-one was on the street save a lone wagon trotting by. The girl was late. That was unusual. Agatha came home regularly at quarter to seven each evening. She was as regular as the clock on the wall she had fixed her second week here. Helpful girl. She had pitched in with the canning three days ago. Strange, coming in with all sorts of journals and books on science. She wandered the city on Sundays after attending church with Helga.  
  
Two figures reeled drunkenly down the sidewalk. One of them wore Agatha's hat and coat. Helga sighed. The evils of the city claimed another soul. Stuffing her feet into slippers, Helga opened the door between parlour and the common entrance to the house. Helga counted off the seconds. Twenty, ten, nine, eight... It was an old trick she'd mastered to deal with unruly guests. Yanking open the front door, she drew in a deep breath to roast the girl a good one so she'd never be tempted to--  
  
" ** _Clear a table. Hot water, any high proof alcohol you can find."_**  
  
The voice rammed into Helga Schraff's brain like a Prussian drillmaster.  
  
Agatha Heterodyne stood on the stoop with a sparking--gun?--in her hand, supporting a terribly beaten man wearing a Jew's prayer cap. Half a sleeve dangled empty on his left side.  
  
**_"What are you waiting for? GO!"_**  
  
For once in her life,Helga Schraff gave not a word of complaint.  
  
+++  
  
Agatha picked through the carbonized remains of her insurance policy. The intact revolver frame had been set aside on one corner of the cloth spread out on Mrs. Schraff's kitchen table. Well, it had worked to a point. The beam had lost collimation a meter and a half away. At the range she had been forced to use it, the degradation of effect had not been noticeable. Tsssk. Look at that. She had missed on an obvious connection there linking the dynamo to the galvanic acceleration array. The circuitry she had put in was, in hindsight, a kludge. A short burst of atonal humming escaped her as she worked out five ways she could have done it better.  
  
She had personally killed a man.  
  
Agatha had caused death before. She had burned down the monsters at the bridge leading to Passholt without a qualm. She had had a few uneasy moments afterwards, realizing they could have been the former inhabitants of that dead town. But then they hadn't technically been human by then. She knew intellectually she had slaughtered large numbers of the Baron's troops in that furious rage after Lars' death. But it had been her clanks who had done the deed; she had only played the control hymns on the Silverlodeon to guide the Battle Circus. It hadn't been as direct as when she had pulled the trigger and seen the blue-white beam of her death ray strike the mugger in the chest. What was she supposed to feel? Shock?  
  
Agatha flexed one bandaged hand. Burn salve had been smeared across her palm beneath the gauze.  
  
Ah yes, shock. Next time, she'd add extra insulation to the wiring.  
  
Stairs creaked. Agatha knew for a fact that Mrs. Schraff allowed them to creak just so she could track boarders trying to sneak about. Her landlady came into the kitchen, snow on the shoulders of her coat. She spared the mess of wiring and burned parts a brief look before going to the stove. Silently, she stoked the coals to heat a kettle of water. Agatha concentrated on her work until the kettle whistled. Laying her tools aside, she folded her hands in her lap as Mrs. Schraff poured a cup of tea.  
  
"Thanks for going to Herr Altman's wife," Agatha said. "I know you're not...fond of their people."  
  
"They're children of God like us," Mrs. Schraff replied. "Even if they are blind to His son's word. I wouldn't turn away a man needing help, nor leave a wife wondering about her husband. Wouldn't be Christian."  
  
"If any trouble comes to your doorstep," Agatha said, "I'll take full responsibility. We should have gone to the town watch."  
  
"The police?" Mrs. Schraff laughed bitterly. "A bunch of thugs. Only difference between them and the Whyos is that the coppers have a badge. Besides, you're a young lady who doesn't want to answer too many questions, do you?"  
  
"I don't want to attract attention." Agatha sighed. "Yet I stay a couple months in one place, and of course it all becomes fire and screaming."  
  
Mrs. Schraff added sugar to her tea.  
  
"Which isn't a good argument for letting me stay," Agatha admitted.  
  
"You pay your rent on time," Mrs. Schraff said. "You're usually quiet. You're an honest, hard-working girl. You don't have to move yet."  
  
"Danke." Agatha bowed her head. "I keep on losing places I can call home."  
  
"Go up and see your patient," Mrs. Schraff said. "Be sure to find a place to hide that abomination. I never saw it myself."  
  
Agatha gathered the remains of her death ray in the cloth. Carrying the bundle, she climbed the stairs to top. She eased open the door to her room. Mr. Altman lay on he bed. It was perhaps the only time a man had been allowed in a girl's room at the _Scharffhoff._ Stitches ran up a shaved portion of scalp from a head laceration, His ribs had been bound with makeshift bandages taken from clean bedsheets. Kindling from the woodpile out back had been used as a splint for his fractured right arm. Black fire and slag, is that what she'd have looked like if Moloch's brother had had his way with her? If she had left a minute later, the mugger would have killed Mr. Altman.  
  
Never again.  
  
He looked up from the sheaf of notes. It was one of many sketchbooks filled with her drawings. Agatha blushed as she realized the condition of her room. It wasn't messy. It was, er, cluttered. Stacks of books and journals took up most of the available floor space. Where clothes weren't hung, drawings were pinned to the walls and models hung from more nail-hooks. Without Lilith to chide her, Agatha tended to fill her quarters with stuff. It wasn't as if she had a castle to store it in. Gah. She had had a castle full of rooms and labs. Admittedly, it had been off-and-on trying to kill her. But the storage space!  
  
"Mechanic, piano teacher, dance instructor," Mr. Altman said. He picked up her still-unfinished project. "Toymaker. You never cease to amaze me, Fraulein Heterodyne."  
  
"Just a dreamer, Herr Altman," Agatha said.  
  
"Dreamers don't make guns that shoot lightning," Mr. Altman said.  
  
"It's hard to explain," Agatha said.  
  
"You don't have to," Mr. Altman said. "That scum who attacked me said he'd let me live long enough to see my Rivkah's face after he threw acid upon her. He even showed me the vial."  
  
"He wasn't a random mugger."  
  
"The idiot half-brother of Hannah owed him gambling debts." Mr Altman grunted in pain. "Herr McGee said I owed him the money. I refused and said I'd set the law on him. I tried to, but it seems he has friends at Tammany Hall."  
  
"Will there be more attacks?" If she worked for a couple of hours, she might be able to replace her insurance policy with some spare parts...  
  
"No. I believe what happened to him will scare off any others." Mr Altman held up a detailed blueprint Agatha had drawn from memory of a _Leuchtkafer_ -class medium airship. "You can construct one of these?"  
  
"If I had money, and a shipyard, and trained minions." Agatha shrugged. "I'm short of all three at the moment."  
  
"Mmmm." Mr. Altman tilted his head back, easing his battered body into a better position. "We shall see. I want you to take over the company until I recover."  
  
"I've never run anything larger than organizing a lab," Agatha said. "I've only worked for you a little more than a month."  
  
"You know the shop inside and out already," Mr. Altman said. "I'll deal with the accounts from home. It'll will be good. Some sympathy for a man after a terrible fall on Christmas day always sweetens a deal."  
  
"I have some ideas on how to get you healed quicker," Agatha insisted. "Don't worry, I always numb the nipples before attaching the electrodes."  
  
"Your bedside manner needs work," Mr. Altman said.  
  
"That's been pointed out to me."  
  
"Hannah will be glad for a chance to keep me about." Mr. Altman nodded. "After a few months, I can tell how well you'd do with a company of your own. I've always had an eye for opportunity. I'd like to be known for more than sewing shirtwaists."  
  
"You mean you'd give me money to build these?" Agatha asked. Mein Gott--a chance for a machine shop of her own, an _opportunity to finally work on some concepts she had seen in Van Rijn's notes--_  
  
"Ach, stop with that noise," Mr. Altman said. "You could at least hum a little Mozart. The airship and these strange golems? No, I'm not Herr Gould. I don't have that much in the bank. But I have some ideas.  
  
"How do you feel about bicycles?"


	7. Chapter 7

Christmas Day, 1892, Schraff Rooming House  
  
Moishe had seen hell when he had marched with Grant into Virginia. The days of the Wilderness had taught him well in the ways men could be pulped and shattered. Hannah had to suffer his screams when the worst of the dreams came. The death of that momzer from Five Points had been cleaner than many he had seen in the war. What had shocked him to his core was Agatha. No hesitation. Pure purpose. She had pulled the trigger on an experienced thug with little more remorse than stamping out a cockroach. She had carried him--a man older and plumper than his army days--as easily as the sergeant who had borne him six miles to the camp hospital. It had taken all of his control to stay calm.  
  
Agatha Heterodyne worked in her sleep on her little toy. Moishe was not so sure it was a toy. He glanced at the drawing of an incredibly detailed, _human-_ _like_ automaton whose arrangement of internal gears and clockwork hurt his eyes. The mechanic he had hired to check her work after her promotion had said her modifications were difficult to understand. Frankly, she had done so well in her first day working on the sewing machines that he could have fired her then and there. If he had been so stupid as to think others might be as able as her to maintain them, or realized her other myriad skills. Yet it was unnerving that a girl so young could kill like a veteran and flash into command like a German princess.  
  
He owed her everything.  
  
*DING*  
  
Metal shutters on the little egg-shaped mechanical doll in her hands opened, revealing two blue lenses.  
  
The crown atop its head crackled with electricity.  
  
Agatha's habitual atonal melody came out of it like a mechanical Mozart at the keys of G-d's own harpsichord.  
  
Moishe Altman would later write that this was when fear became wonder.  
  
++++  
  
December 26, 1892  
  
"Thank you, Frau Schraff," Agatha said, as she pushed aside the kitchen table. "I'll clean up afterwards."  
  
"It's too cold in the shed." Mrs. Schraff added a few more coals into the stove. "Herr Altman is welcome to see you here. Providing he stays in the parlour. I can't have you thinking you can bring any man you want into your rooms."  
  
"I can always count on you to guard my respectability," Agatha said, wheeling the bicycle into the center of the room. Mr. Altman had had it delivered from the city's leading cycling shop.  
  
"Pretty thing," Mrs. Schraff said. "Pity you'll be tearing it apart."  
  
"It's a Columbia Model 30, one of the best on the market." Agatha set out a hacksaw, screwdrivers, and wrenches. "Velocipedes weren't common where I came from. I know the basic mechanics behind them--"  
  
"Already have three different ideas of how to improve it?"  
  
" _Ten,_ " Agatha said, green eyes slightly manic behind her glasses. _"Admirable workmanship, but there's so much room for advancement. You could fit an internal gearing system--ach, why not a drum brake--dynamos for a small arc-lamp in front-- **hah, it has a fixed sprocket, a Liegiois free-wheel system would be perfect--"**_  
  
"I'll leave you to your business," Mrs. Schraff said, easing away.  
  
After she left, a *BING* came from a pocket in Agatha's leather workman's apron.  
  
_**"Yes, Queenie. We have much to do. Hee. It's great to be at work again."**_  
  
+++  
April 1893  
  
"My son is healthy, Signora Heterodyne," Mrs. Cotroni said. "You are one with the angels!"  
  
"I'm glad," Agatha said, in her still-inexpert Italian. "It wasn't hard to diagnose. As long as you stick to the treatment, he will grow to a fine boy. Do you want me to stop by after work for a check-up?"  
  
"I would never ask that of you," Altman Fashion's recently-promoted floor manager exclaimed. "You have done so much for all of us. I will light a candle for you at church every day."  
  
Agatha flushed at the effusive praise. Well, what else was she supposed to do? When she had overheard Giulia talking about her son's fever, it wasn't as if she could walk away from the problem. Agatha didn't have Professor Beetle's public hospitals and university labs to take of her min--employees. Medical care for the poor in this city was a disgrace. She had to make the rounds after work whenever she heard of health problems. It cut into her sleep, of course. Lots of things lately were doing that.  
  
She glared at the papers strewn at the desk Mr. Altman had reigned from as patriarch of the company. No wonder Silas Merlot had loathed the petty bureaucratic tasks foisted on him by Doctor Beetle. Agatha still didn't think he had had to chase her around Der Kestle with a suit of clank-armor. But now she had a better understanding of the source of his rage. Running the company was much more difficult than organizing a lab or running a blacksmith shop. It was even worse in the midst of a financial panic. Railroad stocks had crashed back in February. Lines out of banks had stretched for blocks as customers started uncontrolled runs on banks. Her own account seemed secure, but you never knew.  
  
Agatha took on particular file folder out from under a teetering stack. She flipped through the pages filled with blueprints of assembly clanks, and notes from her visit to the Pope plant in Hartford. She had had so many ideas after her reconnaissance under the guise of "seeing where her machine had been made". The manufacturing methods of American industry weren't alien to her experience. The factories of Beetleburg had had much more advanced machining equipment. But there wasn't the market in a Europa still shattered by the Other and Long Wars for the mass-production Americans were capable of.  
  
The opportunities were endless. An entire market of poor people was ignored because none of the manufacturers could get prices below what a well-off clerk or shopkeeper could afford. It was so frustrating. She could build them ever so much better and cheaper. Still, she didn't blame Herr Altman. There were too many competitors at a time when money was scarce. They would have to pay Pope Manufacturing royalties because its owner held the American patent rights to the safety bicycle--  
  
A key landed on the desk in front of her.  
  
"Come on, Agatha," Herr Altman said. "It's time."  
  
++++  
  
Agatha stared up at the newly painted sign: a green background with elegant gold lettering.  
  
HETERODYNE UNLIMITED, flanked on either side by golden trilobites.  
  
"The structure is sound," Moishe Altman said. There was an explosion of pigeons from out a window as the Second Avenue El rattled past a block away. "We'll have to shoot those."  
  
"Well, might as well get started." Agatha squared her shoulders.  
  
*DING* came a chime from a coat pocket. More *DINGS* echoed from inside the battered brick building.  
  
"Let's get to work."

++++

Agatha's breath steamed inside the headquarters of Heterodyne Unlimited. There were mouse nests in the corners and guano speckled about the floor. Much of the window glazing was gone. Small piles of rocks hinted it had been the target of young boys with too much time on their hands. The rather, er, explicit writing and drawings in chalk on the brick walls outside told her that their minds hadn't been idle. Inventive little scamps. The floor was occupied by great copper vats connected by a maze of piping. Combined with the musty smell, it was obvious what this place had been: an old brewery.  
  
She walked over to hulking shapes covered in tarpaulins. One by one she pulled the coverings off. Jigs, lathes, drop-forging machines: all the machinery she had listed in the inventory was here. Agatha spun a lathe experimentally. It moved well enough, but the working parts looked worn. It was second-hand at best. Her little clanks swarmed over them. Four primaries directed them with only minimal punching and shoving. A curt trill from Queenie kept them from the open warfare her two rebellious assistants had engaged in back home. Turning about, she nodded to Herr Altman. He leaned heavily on a cane.  
  
"Dare I ask why this property was so cheap?" Agatha asked.  
  
"There was a murder fifteen years ago," he replied. "The rumours about hauntings are only that."  
  
"Wunderbar." She gestured at the fermenting vats. "Those will come in handy. Where I came from, importing rubber was difficult. There's a formula derived from coal-tar derivatives we can use in its place."  
  
"This is good. It will be a valuable patent," Altman said. "The tariffs on rubber are high."  
  
"These are one step away from the junkyard," Agatha said. "At least this is a proper machine shop, not the hand tools I had to use while I was with the circus. Rivet's selection was excellent, though."  
  
"I bought them from a sewing machine company that went under," Altman said. "Other companies are moving into bicycle making. There's no other market."  
  
"We'll have to move fast." Agatha bit her lip. "You borrowed a lot of money, didn't you?"  
  
"Concentrate on your work, Agatha," Altman said. "I will handle the finances. You handle the factory. All will be well."  
  
"It had better be." Fists on her hips, Agatha once again surveyed her domain. "I won't fail you, Herr Altman. You won't go under because of me."  
  
Agatha strode over to the steam engine in one corner of the building. Like everything else, it was a second-hand unit a good ten years out of date. Agatha rolled up her sleeves. Herr Altman had bet his fortune upon her. He had effectively burned his boats at the shore. If she didn't produce, Hannah and Rivkah might be forced to move into a tenement if her employer--and now, she realized, partner--couldn't pay his debts. Not on her watch. Not after she had failed Gil, and Tarvek, and the entire town of Mechanicsburg. _Not again._  
  
After two hours, the steam engine roared to life.  
  
After four, light shone out from the broken windows.  
  
++++  
  
_New York World,_ article bylined by Nellie Bly, May 1894  
  
...in the gloom of our nation's straitened circumstances, the safety bicycle had become a symbol of progress and prosperity. The bedeviled horses who work the city streets are swarmed by hundred of wheels ridden by the those who disdain the crowded omnibus and the rigid schedules of the elevated railways. Man, woman and child ride out of the city to find peace in the country-side roads.   
  
The name "Columbia" once represented the acme of the American bicycle industry. However, within the space of a year a new marque has become the standard by which both American and European makes must be judged. The curious golden symbol adorning on models such as the "Liberty", the "Rover", and the "Mustang" has become a sign of both quality and economy among wheelmen and wheelwomen all over the nation. The ubiquitous "Punch" and "Judy" models that rush along every street and alley have given even the poorest of laborers a chance for the freedom a bicycle offers.  
  
The factory at Heterodyne Unlimited hums with life and activity all hours of the day. Several continuous belts of ingenious design bring parts and frame sections past workers each assigned to one task. Some of these workers were not human. To this reporter's astonishment, wheels are laced by tireless mechanical arms and frames assembled and brazed by automata. The Pope Manufacturing concern in Hartford might finish forty machines on an excellent day. Two times that amount are produced per hour in Heterodyne Unlimited's factory.  
  
All this is by the hand of one woman: Agatha Heterodyne. She walks the floor of the factory with animation and diligence. Spurning skirts, Miss Heterodyne dashes about in a workman's overalls and flat tweed cap. Her hands are rarely unoccupied by some tool or another. This reporter saw her produce a pistol of strange design, fire a climbing line and hook to the ceiling, and proceed to help seal a slight leak from one of the chemical pipes. There is no comment from the workers on the floor, either men or women. Women are represented among Heterodyne Unlimited's employees--both traditional roles such as stitching riding saddles, and delicate work assembling the revolutionary six-speed internal gear hubs which are a distinguishing feature of the Heterodyne safety bicycle.  
  
Yet, all this was not the most amazing thing.  
  
For Miss Heterodyne ushered her into an attached building to introduce her new project: the Dirigible...


	8. Chapter 8

Telegram from George Westinghouse, Jr to Nikola Tesla, May 1894  
  
ASSESS HETDYNE STOP IS FRAUD YES NO STOP REPORT IMMEDIATE STOP  
  
++++  
  
May 31st, 1894  
  
So this was the result of his offhanded gift two years ago. Nikola Tesla watched the morning shift enter the Heterodyne Unlimited Works from across the street. Like his own laboratory on South Houston, the neighborhood surrounding her property was the usual mixture of tenements and light industrial enterprises. The main differences was the brick of the converted brewery building was scrubbed as clean as the furniture in a Union Square brownstone. The smokestacks projecting through the roof did not belch noxious vapors. There was a barely a hint of smoke. The decorative brass trilobites scattered about gleamed brightly.  
  
Nikola approved.  
  
A hawking sound broke his concentration. Nikola did not deign to acknowledge his companion. Thomas Alva Edison wiped his lips after gobbing chewing tobacco into the street gutter. At least the man had shaved and brushed his hair. Nikola brushed his hands together three times. To think that he had thought the man a giant. Among the man's practical jokes was denying a promise to pay Nikola fifty thousand dollars for improving his inferior yet vaunted electrical equipment. That was not the act of a gentleman. Naturally, it would not be gentlemanly to discuss--even quietly, in private--the conflict between themselves.  
  
Strawberry blonde hair shone as bright as the locket at Agatha Heterodyne's throat. He would have recognized the symbol earlier, had not his preoccupations this last year distracted him. He had not paid much attention what bicycle makers put on their machines. Light blinded him for a moment. He visualized every detail of their meeting at that little Transylvanian village. Her frustration, her loneliness, a cultured woman lost in the wilds--his vision cleared and he saw the woman before him. Dressed in a green tweed skirt and matching vest over a white shirtwaist, she was wholly unlike the angry peasant girl he had encountered. She was all smiles, striding confidently across the street. Oh, good. Her hair was in a bun without a jeweled comb. A woman's hair hanging loose-- Edison had the wherewithal to tip his hat gallantly.  
  
"Glad to finally meet New York's 'girl genius'," Edison said in a jocular tone. "You've been hiding your light under a bushel."  
  
"Oh, that stupid headline." Agatha smiled wryly. "Miss Cochrane said it was her editor's idea. Ah, am I speaking clearly for you Herr Edison?"  
  
"I can read you fine," Edison said. "I wish I could hear your voice more clearly. It must be as pretty as you are."  
  
"Flatterer," Agatha said, smiling good-naturedly. "If you're planning on distracting me while your minions plunder my lab, think again!"  
  
"Wouldn't think of it, Miss Heterodyne," Edison replied.  
  
"Are you sure?" Agatha sounded almost...disappointed? "I haven't really had a chance to give my security systems a proper workout since we found that janitor who was dipping into my files."  
  
"Someone spied on you?" Nikola asked. "I hope he was charged."  
  
"About two hundred thousand volts," Agatha said. "He was technically alive when we handed him over to the police. Mind was scrambled like an egg, so no idea who hired him."  
  
"You Westinghoused a thief?" Edison blurted out.  
  
"Ah ah, none of that War of the Currents stuff," Agatha said, waving an admonishing finger. "If you'd like a duel, then do it properly: electro-fences at dawn."  
  
"I would much prefer a tour of your laboratory," Nikola said. "I am very glad the ticket and money I sent you were of use. By the look of things, the books on basic mechanics was not needed."  
  
"Money? Hmmmph, someone must have taken it from your package." Agatha smiled, opening her arms. "Those watchmaker's tools were a lifesaver. Without them and your generosity--"  
  
Nikola retreated, almost dirtying the back of his elegantly-cut suit against the grimy wall behind him.  
  
"Whoops. Space. Understood."  
  
Edison shot him a calculating look as they followed Agatha into her factory. Doubtless he thought they had had an affair of some sort. Let the man think what he would. The interior of the shop floor was as clean as the outside. Nikola's eyes widened at the glowing blue globes in the ceiling. Phosphorescent lamps! Edison clearly saw the advanced design. He also saw the man's eyes narrow at the visible portions of the factory's wiring: AC standard. Westinghouse records had shown that Heterodyne Unlimited had bought AC components without asking for a technician from Pittsburgh to install it.  
  
Mechanical arms moved with inhuman precision. Nikola stared in fascination at the "clanks" mentioned in the newspaper article. These were no crude Jacquard looms. They were everywhere: tireless workers whose limbs projected out of cylindrical bases. The humans who worked among them seemed as happy. It might be due to the complex automated organ in one corner of the factory floor. It pumped out a jaunty tune that had both his and Edison's feet tapping in reaction. To Nikola's surprise, many of the workers were colored who laboured beside their white counterparts without any sign of animosity. Women worked in separate areas, doing assembly work involving small parts.  
  
Upon everyone was a tiny trilobite badge pinned to breast or throat.  
  
Agatha stopped before a lens set in a section of wall at the far side of the HU works. She presented her face to it and hummed a complex atonal rhythm. Suddenly, twin gatling guns popped out from a hatch in the ceiling. They only spun down and withdrew when Agatha shouted a hurried "AND GUESTS". Security systems. Oh, yes. It was with some nervousness that both inventors entered the elevator that appeared from behind a hidden door. Nikola realized that the callypigian physique hinted at beneath Agatha's clothes was muscle rather than--he shuddered--fat.  
  
Nikola gasped when they stepped out of the elevator. Edison's establishment had been corporate affairs--each lab working under the direction and for the public credit of the Wizard of Menlo Park. Like his own lab, Agatha worked in what was more an artist's atelier. An industrial loft on the second floor of a building adjoining the main factory had been converted into one great experimental space. More phospherescent globes and wide windows provided light. There was no vibration from the factory though the polished wooden floor. Everywhere there was apparati: dynamos, chemistry equipment, a wide cast-iron tube with a huge fan at one end. Ah! A wind tunnel. At the opposite end was steel scaffolding that contained living quarters: a library and small kitchen area below, presumably living quarters above. Interesting. One section with padded mats had physical culture equipment and a variety of weapons in neat racks.  
  
Above it all hung the Dirigible. It deserved the capital D.  
  
"That's an internal frame," Edison said, examining the exposed skeleton. "Looks like you used aluminum for the those three longitudinal girders, and-- bamboo for those triangular trusses?"  
  
"Well spotted!" Agatha said. "Bamboo and some proprietary chemical treatments to create a composite material. The envelope will be a silk and aerocanvas blend, three layers. We're already starting production on the lifting gas."  
  
"You are using a telegraphic control scheme." Nikola circled the model hanging above them. "With servos based on your, ah, clanks?"  
  
"Duplicate mechanical control system, too." Agatha pointed out more features: the four swiveling engine pods mounted on two of the trusses, the X-shaped "ruddervator" system, the twelve person cabin. "Two crew, nine hundred kilometer range, 1900 kilograms cargo capacity. Rather small by airship standards, really."  
  
"Standards?" Edison said.  
  
"By the, ah, standards of what's technically achievable," Agatha corrected herself. "I've been corresponding with a most insightful man in Wurrtemberg. We've agreed to pool our patents and expertise."  
  
"Goddamn!" Edison smacked his fist into his palm, grinning like a schoolboy. "Won't this make the railroad and shipping boys run scared. Count me in. I've been planning on getting out of the damn electrical business anyway. Too many amateurs and thieves."  
  
"You will have to speak with Herr Altman on the details." Agatha turned to Tesla. "I'd like to consult with you on certain ideas that you expressed in your lectures that year. I couldn't attend personally. So much to do. I even almost missed seeing the Columbian Exhibition."  
  
"I would be honored to work with an artist," Nikola said, ignoring Edison's crude enthusiasm. "Are you speaking of Hertzian waves and their travel through the ether? You are thinking of wireless telegraphy."  
  
"More like navigation aids," Agatha said. "Ho, I'm inviting you two to collaborate on the first meeting. How scandalous."  
  
"If you have any other pieces," Nikola said, "I would enjoy examining them."  
  
"Now that you mention it, I was really inspired when I visited the new kinetoscope parlour on Broadway."  
  
++++  
  
Gas filled the little glass globe. Tiny lamps of blue, green, and red focused into thin beams, tracing an image within the cloud of gas. A tiny, doll-like image of Agatha Heterodyne appeared in the device. It was three dimensional. Small horns at the base trumpeted a fanfare, then her voice came out synchronized with her image. It moved as if she had been miniaturized and placed on a stage within the globe.  
  
"Yes, we have no bananas," her image sang.  
  
"I used to be in a traveling circus before you met me," Agatha explained. "The principles were from what little I was able to work out from Master Payne's illusion tricks. I guess I'll never know all of them."  
  
"How did you put all that information on film?" Nikola said, blinding light filling his vision as he _calculated._  
  
"It's captured by a standard clank vision system and memory store," Agatha explained. "My original version could only store a short message--clanks can't store the full image, it's all pattern matching--but _I realized that by reducing the power of my death ray I could etch so much code onto a spininng metal plate--_ oh! Herr Tesla, help me with Herr Edison."  
  
"I think he was just overcome, Miss Heterodyne," Nikola said, at the recumbent figure of the Wizard of Menlo Park.  
  
"Hold on, let me find the smelling salts."  
  
++++  
  
Telegraph from Nikola Tesla to George Westinghouse, Jr., evening of May 31st, 1894  
  
SEND REPEAT SEND ALL MONEY STOP 


	9. Chapter 9

Glenmont, June 1st, 1894  
  
Thomas Edison didn't care much about book smarts. Professors up in their ivory towers, they could scribble all they wanted. Hell, you could buy genius for a nickel-a-bushel if you were sharp enough. He'd beat out plenty others who had more schooling than him. Sweat, persistence, and knowing what and when to invent something were what made you a success. Of course, having the best patent lawyers on retainer and feeding 'em some scraps of raw meat every so often to keep them hungry helped. These days, he didn't even have to leave his library at the labs. He'd read about something in the paper, sketch out an idea, and send it down to his "muckers" for research and prototyping.  
  
The Wizard of Menlo Park sat in private office glaring with a mixture of hatred and wonder at the treasure on his desktop. It was a brass orb on an elegantly-cast tripod support. Dozens of little red, blue, and green lenses covered the top of the device. A ring of glass around the middle and a dome of the same at the bottom glowed with white-blue electric fire. It didn't need to be plugged in. If he placed his hand against it, he could feel the clockwork within powering whatever thingamajig that _twenty-year old girl off the boat from Transylvania_ had stuck into it. What the hell did they feed 'em over in Eastern Europe?  
  
That girl and Tesla. Edison shuddered. He'd been staring dumbfounded at that goddamn gadget that would spell humiliation for him. A full-colour, speaking kinetoscope that could run off her metal recording discs which could hold twenty minutes' worth of motion pictures. God knew how many songs they could hold. Then she and that uppity Serb had started jabbering about the Northern Lights and charged magnetic fields and optical projection-- There'd been the hum. His deaf ears had filtered out most of what had hit Tesla like a jug of mountain dew. But even he'd been caught up, handing her tools and trying to catch up with that strawberry-blonde witch.  
  
A mucker. She'd turned him and Tesla both into muckers for the six hours they'd spent in her lab. At the end, she'd proudly presented him with this...hellfire, what would you call something that could render a thee-dimensional image of a light bulb above it in mid-air without any sort of screen? Maybe something in Greek that meant "Edison just got skunked". He wanted to crush it. Thomas Alva Edison wasn't no fool, though. Stubborn, sure. But not when she said she'd share the patent with him and Tesla. That crazy Serb had even given up credit to her. Not him. Tom had smiled his best, most sincere smile--the one he saved for widows who'd inheirited patents he needed--and said he'd send one of his boys down to the Patent Office with it.  
  
Edison didn't even think of rooking her. Someone who guarded their privacy with Gatling guns might not be the sort who'd take lightly to thievery. All might be fair in love and industrial espionage...unless a body had seen the maniacal smile on Agatha Goddamn Heterodyne's face. His talk with that shylock who'd been backing her been like he'd been a boar with his balls caught in a picket fence, and smiling Mr. Altman was the farmer coming out of the farmhouse with a straight razor. Edison winced at the contract terms: a ten-year exclusive contract to buy airships from Heterodyne Unlimited. Jumped-up tailor had even had the papers drawn up for Edison Aviation, a corporation Tom hadn't even thought of creating last morning.  
  
Edison Aviation.  
  
Huh.  
  
Tom clipped the end off a cigar. Lighting it, he blew a stream of smoke at the ghostly light bulb. Well, no one ever accused the Heebs of being stupid when it came to making a dollar. Altman had sweetened the deal by agreeing to keep this little wonder quiet. Nikola wouldn't tell tales. He had his damn gentleman's honor. Fool. That was why Edison had a mansion, and Tesla rented a hotel room. Yeah. "Father of American Aviation". "Wise elder guiding the bright young girl genius who'd decided to make it good in America". The public would love it. Westinghouse and that stealing maggot Thomas and J.P. Morgan might have knocked him out of the market he'd created. So what? The airways were wide open. Hell. Imagine being the first man in America to boast of having his own personal air yacht.  
  
Pride was pride.  
  
It was also stupid, when you found out the innovation equivalent of Sutter's Mill dropped right into your lap.  
  
This had the makings of a beautiful relationship.  
  
Edison blew a smoke ring. Well, until he was good and sure he could pay back Altman in kind in a way that Heterodyne girl couldn't kick up a fuss about...  
  
++++  
  
Heterodyne Unlimited, June 1st, 1894  
  
"And it is done," Moishe said, as he read the telegram.  
  
"Did it have to be blackmail?" Agatha asked. "I enjoyed working with him. He's not so strong on mathematics, but he has good technical skills."  
  
"Edison is a successful man," Moishe said. "He is also a powerful man. He might think us weak. Best for everyone that he doesn't. As for blackmail, all you did was make an invention to impress him. Nu, you are an eager girl."  
  
"Business in America is even more cut-throat than politics back home." Agatha considered. "At least it leaves fewer scorch marks on the landscape."  
  
"Our deal is not so bad for him," Moishe continued. "A little bitter, a little sweet. Just like a Pesach plate. We have his name and reputation behind us. He has your genius to call upon, for a reasonable fee."  
  
"And you have the monopoly on aerocanvas production," Agatha reminded him.  
  
"And I am very grateful for that, and everything," Moishe said. "Will you come tonight to celebrate Shabbat with my wife and I?"  
  
"Of course," Agatha said.  
  
"Unless," Moishe said with a knowing smile, "you might wish to go to Delmonico's? Herr Tesla is often there--"  
  
"I'm--I'm sure we'll meet again in Pittsburgh," Agatha said. "We should keep things formal. After all, it is business."  
  
Waving the telegram like a trophy, Moishe climbed up the spiral staircase leading to her private lab and home above the hidden machine shop in the lower floor of the converted warehouse. All around her were lathes, maker-clanks, and custom-made equipment that was too large to fit in her personal quarters. The old-money clans of New York and the upstart tycoons might question why she hadn't moved to Gramercy Park, staying in her own factory in the Lower East Side. Then again, the upper crust of this world never had had to deal with Sparks. The architects back home often had to deal with clients who wanted an intimate little Death Ray Testing Chamber right off the main bedroom. She doubted Stanford White would be so understanding.  
  
Agatha glanced up at the airship hull resting on its support cradle. The aerocanvas envelope was dyed green with gold striping along the seams and edges of the ruddervator fins; a golden trilobite and "Edison Aviation" were emblazoned on in the middle. She had put Edison's logo above her mark at Altman's insistence. Might as well assuage the man's pride. It rankled that she might have to suppress such a wonderful piece of work as that hologram projector. Ach, well, they still needed Edison's imprimatur to establish her legitimacy as more than another wide-eyed inventor. To give him his due, Herr Edison had held his own while she had been in her Spark-fugue. It had been great to collaborate with someone.  
  
Someone like Nikola.  
  
Agatha finally allowed herself to blush crimson. It must be the date. She had become rather depressed last year when the first of June came about. It had reminded her of Zeetha, and Krosp, and Der Kestle, and Tarvek and Gil. One year gone without any idea how to return home. Without being able to...resolve whatever had been between herself and those two men. The times when she had been working with them had been among the high points of her life. Even if it had been while fighting off her megalomaniacal mother's mental ghost and fighting slaver wasps, respectively. So she might be a little vulnerable after working with Nik--Herr Tesla a day before the anniversary of the botched Si Vales. Even though he had _**absolutely brilliant insights into galvano-magnetic theory and could envision designs in his mind on the fly--**_  
  
Agatha fired up her still-in-progress Cyclonic Rug Cleaning Device. At least it didn't rip her clothes off the last time she had tested it. There. All she needed was a bit--well, a whirling vortex--of air to clear her head. The man was much older than her and married to his work. The man was deathly afraid of close contact because of germ fear. Not that that put her off much. When one of your professors thought he was a giant bumblebee, one learned to deal with eccentricities. Right. Get yourself together, Agatha. She had to prepare for the big debut: the first flight of her airship on the Fourth of July. That meant shakedown flights and actually learning how to fly the thing. Especially given the one time she had done so.  
  
At least she wouldn't have a hydrophobic talking cat fighting over the controls.  
  
Agatha pressed a button. A section of wall swung open into a closet in the back of her office. No Spark's home-and-industrial complex was complete without a couple of hidden doors and passageways. She could hear the hum of her factory outside. As much as she missed home, she hadn't done a half-bad job here. No legendary family name or city full of minions to back her up. Only hard work, the trust of Moishe Altman, and the respect she earned from her employees. The trilobite badge meant something in the Lower East Side. Hard work was rewarded for those who had proven themselves to her.  
  
Helga Schraff stood by her desk with a sheaf of papers. Her former landlady had proven an excellent personnel manager. She ensured the women's needs were taken care of, and efficiently terrified the men into curbing their cruder impulses on the workfloor. It went a little against Heterodyne Unlimited's "Don't Be Evil" corporate policy on employee relations. But it was an acceptable, benign reign of fear that ensured that Agatha didn't have to have A Talk In Her Office. She'd only had two in the year HU had been in operation. The second had been...unpleasant, involving one of the new hires screaming that she was a "nigger-loving race traitor" when one of the colored men had been promoted ahead of him. That was when her employees discovered why she kept a meter-long steel monkey wrench hung behind her desk, beneath a sign reading "Complaints Department".  
  
"Any problems?" Agatha asked, double-checking payroll records. "I know I'm putting a lot on the staff, setting up that new production line for the coffee makers."  
  
"No complaints," Helga replied. "They're eager to use their company discounts when they come on the market."  
  
"Have you found out which one's the new Pinkerton spy?" Agatha asked.  
  
"Mr. O'Reilly," Helga said. "Should I bring them into the office?"  
  
"No, they haven't sabotaged anything," Agatha explained. "And his performance figures are excellent. Just make sure he doesn't try what Siepowicz did--Helga?"  
  
"Yes, Agatha?"  
  
"Nik--Herr Tesla has invited me to walk with him in Central Park Saturday."  
  
"Oh yes, it'll do you a world of good. A young lady always cooped up in the lab? Unnatural."  
  
"I don't recall signing the invitation and replying."  
  
"No, you wouldn't. I placed a copy of the reply in the files, all proper."  
  
"Helga..."  
  
"Mr. Altman and I talked about it." Helga sniffed. "I might not approve of woman carrying on, but-- young lady, it's time you courted. You're nearly twenty-one, and if this continues you'll be a spinster."  
  
"I can't believe this!" Agatha said, beet-red. "I thought you hated your husband and thought men were vile beasts with hideous carnal appetites."  
  
"Not if you train them properly," Helga explained. "I'll be coming along as a chaperone, of course. Herr Tesla is supposed to be a gentleman. Appearances do matter, though."  
  
Agatha groaned. 


	10. Chapter 10

  
Heterodyne Unlimited, afternoon, June 1st, 1894  
  
***PWOOOOOOSH***  
  
Moloch hung the last tire on the transport belt of overhead hooks that took them from the curing room to storage. Somehow, it always worked out that he could pop the last one out of the molds right when the whistle blew. He stripped off his heavy leather gloves and the face mask that kept out the worst of the fumes. He mopped his face with a handkerchief. This section of the factory had the same fancy system that kept it warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Working at the molding station still meant it was hot, tough work. Better'n picking cotton in the hell that was summer in Alabama, though.  
  
Moloch stuck in the steel card with little holes into the slot at his station. Something in the punch clock's guts bleeped. He didn't know exactly how it worked. Some of the other workers said that the things were connected up by some sorta telegraph to a big machine in the basement that could think. Moloch thought that was crazy. How could a machine think? Then again, there'd be white folk who'd say the same about people like him. If they'd even thought he was people. Most where he came from and here up North'd say that he wasn't much different than those clank-things on the main floor.  
  
Not here, though. Not when you worked for Miz Agatha.  
  
Moloch hung his card on the pegboard with the other curing room workers. Graziani said something in dago-talk. Friendly, enough, even if Moloch couldn't understand a word. Not like you needed much English for this. Good thing too, since he himself came right out of the 'Bama fields with no book learning at all. They walked together to the men's changing room. It was a pure wonderment, it was. A company that not only gave a body someplace to stick his street clothes, but hot showers right on top of it too? Sure, he and the other colored waited until the white men finished. Miz Agatha might say he had a right to go in with them. But there was only so far a negro could push. Hell, he didn't mind so much--  
  
Dangling from his locker was a small trilobite badge on a chain.  
  
He'd been _badged._  
  
"Congratulations!" O'Reilly's meaty hand smacked him on the back. The curing room boss beamed. "We all took a vote. You earned it."  
  
"I don't know what to say." Moloch ran a hand through his close-cropped curly hair. "All I done is show up and do my job. Only been here a coupla months."  
  
"Work hard, keep quiet," Graziani said. The Italian tapped his nose. "We tell, you fit in good with Signora."  
  
"Yeah, not bad for a field nigger," Fred said.  
  
"Shit, you want that to get back to her?" O'Reilly's usually red face paled to a washed-out pink. "Swear to God, I had to pick that cracker's teeth out of the wall with a chisel 'n hammer when he--"  
  
"I can, he's colored like me," Fred said, as dark as the tires Moloch handled all day. "C'mon, get washed up. Got us some jingle in our pocket. There's this sweet high-yella gal in the Tenderloin you just have to meet."  
  
"I--I gots to head home," Moloch stammered out. "Great-Aunt Beulah don't like me catting around. She gets awful mad."  
  
"She sounds worse'n an ovseer in the slave days," Fred shook his head. "Damn shame. Big man like you should be out on the town."  
  
"Leave the boy alone," O'Reilly said. "Miss Agatha wants him in her office. Probably wants to promote him up to the new line that's starting up."  
  
"Hey, that girl you talking about," Graziani said to Fred, "she have big tette? I like them nice and soft."  
  
"Christ, stick to working your hand," O'Reilly said, "your knuckles are hairy enough."  
  
Moloch flushed as the men bantered. He knew what went on in the Tenderloin. He wouldn't exactly mind a visit to one of the brothels that let in colored folk if you looked decent. Great-Aunt Beulah'd kill him stone dead, though. That woman had a mean streak in her almost as bad as Miz Schraff. Even the tough men on Minetta Lane knew better than to cross her. She'd fit to burst to hear that Moloch had gotten his badge. Miz Agatha was damn near the only white aside from Lincoln that his aunt ever respected. It came from the doctoring Miz Agatha did from time to time in the poor neighborhoods on the East Side. The story of how Miz Agatha had walked right into a black-and-tan saloon to sew up a colored man cut up in a bar fight was a legend in Little Africa.  
  
Moloch washed up quick as he could. He wished he'd have gone in his Sunday best. His street clothes were okay, but they were still patched second-hand stuff. Polishing his new badge, he fastened it at the front of his collar like Miz Agatha's locket. Hopefully she wouldn't take it as a sign he was uppity or anything. Had to admit, he was pretty nervous as he went to her office. Most of the other workers had left. Back in Alabama, a colored man who had been seen alone with a high-class white woman would find himself swinging from a tree at midnight. This was the North, so it wasn't as bad. Still, he hoped the others wouldn't talk. Moloch hated the idea of anyone getting the wrong, dangerous idea.  
  
Miz Schraff greeted him at the door to Miz Agatha's office. Oh, that was alright then. No-one'd think that he'd be doing anything bad with Miz Agatha with her around. Graziani called her "The Striga". Fred called her worse under his breath...but then, Fred didn't bother any of the colored girls working on the line. Only thing scarier than Miz Schraff was the Complaints Department. Moloch was pure relieved it was hanging up on the wall when he came in. Miz Agatha was behind her desk working through some papers. Moloch sat down in the comfy chair in front of her desk.  
  
*DING*  
  
Moloch looked down.  
  
One of _them_ held up a coffee pot and mug, it's single eye looking up at him.  
  
"Feel free," Miz Agatha said, looking up. "Oh, is this the first time you've seen one of my little clanks?"  
  
"Naw, seen 'em out of the corner of my eye, ma'am," Moloch said, taking the offered mug. "We all know about them, Miz Agatha."  
  
"They try to stay out of sight." Miz Agatha rested her chin on her palm, staring at her papers. "I can't believe it. I'm rich. I knew I was heir to a fortune when I was in Mechanicsburg--"  
  
"Is that where you're from?" Moloch asked.  
  
"A small town in Transylvania. You wouldn't find it on any map." Miz Agatha frowned. "Am I paying you people enough? The amount of profit here is ridiculous."  
  
"You pays us fine, ma'am," Moloch said. "Nobody here'd say you're unfair. We'd work for free, as good as you take care of us."  
  
"Thanks for saying that." Miz Agatha sighed. "I better not raise salaries again without consulting Moishe, otherwise I'll never hear the end of it. Anyway, I have a new position from you, Herr Robinson."  
  
"Is it on the line?" A white woman had called him "Mister", by God! He'd damn well go anywhere she wanted.  
  
"No, it's a special duty up in Inwood," Miz Agatha said. "It's a little isolated and rural, but I'm sending Sophia and Maria up there to deal with housekeeping."  
  
"That up north by the Bronx?" Moloch said, still hazy on Manhattan geography. "You have a farm up there?"  
  
"North tip of the island, yes," Miz Agatha said. "And it's not farm work. You're taking the place of Herr Spiegelman. I just got word from his wife that he's come down ill."  
  
"I ain't so good with tools, Miz Agatha." Him? Working on one of her special jobs? He'd heard of men and women taken off the line for mysterious duties, but-- "Don't know how I can be of help."  
  
"Trust me, it's vital. This will be double-pay, of course." Miz Agatha scribbled on a slip. "Herr Butler will be waiting for you outside. You should be able to catch one of the last trains heading north; I've cabled them stop in Inwood."  
  
"Yes, ma'am!"  
  
  
  
++++  
  
June 1st 1894, evening, Inwood, Northern Manhattan  
  
God damn.  
  
_God damn._  
  
Moloch stared slack-jawed into the huge barn. Well, maybe it had started out as a barn. Half of it was new-painted wood. Something like a big sock fluttered like a flag on a pole atop the roof. That was the only sign this building amid the fields of Inwood was different than the other farms around it. Inside? Lordy, he'd heard she was working on it. But seeing it? God. Damn.  
  
"Spiegelman was one of our linesmen," Mr. Butler said, in the shadow of the airship inside Heterodyne Unlimited's aerodrome. "We've been practicing for months on a test rig set up at the main warhouse. We've only got a few days before the test flight. Think you can catch up?"  
  
"Do my best, sir," Moloch said. "Did work on the roads as a gandy dancer a summer or two, 'long with field work. You holler, I'll move with."  
  
"Better be careful," Butler said. "The only other hull is in Miss Heterodyne's shop. That was for pressure tests and frame checks, not flight. We can't afford any mistakes."  
  
"You won't have no problems, sir." Moloch straightened. "Lord, can you imagine it when they make 'em bigger? Be fine to be a porter on 'em, like on a Pullman car."  
  
"Have to get it up in the air," Butler said. "Come on, I'll show you your bunk. We'll start training at dawn, and you aren't getting Sunday off."  
  
Moloch took one last look at the green and gold airship before Mr. Butler closed it. So it was true what he'd been told was on the Heterodyne Unlimited's sign: "There's nothing we can't do." He was going to be a part in the future. Hell, this was something he could tell his grandchildren about. Why, if he cleaned up and learned to talk smart, he might even become a porter on one of her airships. Wouldn't that be fine, to float through the air on the way across the country?  
  
Why, he might even become a captain!  
  
Moloch chuckled.  
  
Don't get ahead of yourself, boy. Not like that would ever happen.  



	11. Chapter 11

Delmonico's, evening of June 1st, 1894  
  
"Have you been dealing with the devil?" Sam said, savoring the contents of his cup. "Because this has the taste of mortal sin."  
  
"No, Mr. Clemens. It is the product of this machine," Charles Delmonico said, "which its creator has offered for our use until it is offered for sale to the general public. It may be found in only the finest establishments in the city, such as ours and the Waldorf."  
  
"If you'd give the inventor's name," Sam said, "I'll add my name to the hosannas it deserves."  
  
"We have agreed to maintain its creatpr's privacy," Delmonico said. "But I am sure a testimonial on your part would be appreciated."  
  
"And no doubt add to the share promised to you," Sam replied with a wink, "for when everyone will want to buy 'a taste of Delmonico's'."  
  
"A fine phrase, Mr. Clemens," Delmonico said. "I will suggest its use in the public advertisements."  
  
Samuel Clemens returned to his after-dinner coffee with a happy sigh. Never had a bean died for a nobler end. He had tasted every variation of coffee in a life that had wandered all over the states and the world: brewed over a miner's campfire, served up from the galley of a Mississippi steamboat, foul chicory muck that defamed the concept, fine roast from Parisian cafes. He had been blind to true perfection all his life, just as Paul had been until that moment on a Syrian road. If this wasn't a product of Satan's wiles, it'd be tipping the hat to Old Scratch to pollute this brew with cream or sugar.  
  
The source of this dark nectar piped away in a corner of the room beneath a sign reading "Coffee Engine". It was a great brass urn with slight bulges in its casing that hinted at plumbing that might rival a Tennessee moonshiner's still. A smokestack like a steamboat's funnel atop the contraption released a fragrant puff of steam that betrayed the ambrosia within. A few neat dials and knobs were set into it. Sam itched to take it home and puzzle it out. He was no mechanic. His enthusiasm for contraptions had damn near lead him to ruin with that compositor. But his love for gadgets drew him to it as if he were in his friend's lab.  
  
Pity he hadn't been able to see Nikola. He had come to the city to talk to him about the news of the hour: the Girl Genius and her dirigible. It was a strangeness not to find the man in his wizard's lair. It had been shut up tight. The concierge at the Gerlach had said Nikola had been staying in his room all day. That worried Sam. Nikola was a man of set patterns. Damn near was a monk, for all the women fawned on him. The pace he set could weaken a man. Their mutual friends the Johnsons had had to mother the man back to some state of health every so often.  
  
Well, well. Here he came, right at eight o'clock as he always did. The headwaiter greeted him at the door, seating him at his usual place by the window. Eighteen clean napkins were brought in on a tray. The Serbian genius polished the silver twelve times, using a seperate serviette each time. Outwardly, he seemed true to his usual form. The corner's of Sam's eyes crinkled, though, as he studied his friend. He had learned to read the vagaries of human nature like he had Old Man River, with its hidden bars and hazards. That slight flush to the cheeks, the more than far away cast to his gaze--  
  
In his mind, Livy's voice scolded him.  
  
"Mind if I join you?' Sam said, carrying his cup with him to Nikola's table. "I've already eaten, and I know you aren't usually partial to company for dinner. But I've come alone to the city. I'd enjoy a little time spent with a friend."  
  
"Of course, Sam," Nikola said, in a distracted tone.   
  
"Thank you kindly." Sip. Ah. "You know, I've often thought about the joy women bring to one's life. Don't know what I'd do without Livy and the girls."  
  
"Dedication to science demands my complete attention," Nikola replied. "A wife may complement a writer such as yourself. I would make a poor husband."  
  
"I agree with you about wives and writers," Sam said. "Certainly, without Livy I'd be considerably worse edited. It's a service to the reading public that she suffers every day. Now, for you an intimate companion would be a distraction."  
  
Sip.  
  
"So who is the woman who has captured my friend's heart?" Sam waggled his bushy eyebrows. "Has Katherine finally worn through your reserve."  
  
"I would never betray Robert," Nikola protested. "Katherine and I share a higher spiritual bond."  
  
"So who?" Oh, how the imp of the perverse danced in Sam's soul. "You should tell me, so that I can counsel you against losing yourself to feminine wiles. Or at least the best way to do it, though I believe Stanford may have some advice there."  
  
"Agatha would not be suitable for Stanford's company," Nikola said.  
  
"Well, I should have guessed," Samuel said. "Genii should court one another."  
  
"She is--" Nikola closed his eyes, as if suffering one of his spells. "Do you know the word 'Sofia' in Greek means 'wisdom'? It is as if I came across Athena."  
  
"Broke her out of her father's head," Samuel said, "with one of your electrical demonstrations? Messy business. Better all around to elope."  
  
"I had no idea when I first met her in that little village," Nikola said.  
  
"I read that in Miss Bly's article," Sam said. "A young lady of great resource, walking right out of the wilds of Hungary. I've a hankering to meet her, if you wouldn't mind an introduction."  
  
"We are going on a walk in Central Park, tomorrow," Nikola said.  
  
If his friend had been more clear of head, he might have thought better of mentioning that.  
  
"Well, now, why don't we make it an excursion," Sam said, as Livy in his mind sighed.  
  
++++  
  
Heterodyne Unlimited, June 2nd, 1894  
  
Right. Which one should she take?  
  
Agatha dithered over the two death rays laid out on her work bench. The one on the left would bring out her eyes. But Nikola was said to dislike over-ornamentation like jewelery. Agatha decided the sleek black-and-brass lightning pistol on the right with the fluted barrel would be better. She slipped it into her handbag. Not that she expected to need it for a Saturday morning walk through Central Park. There was no denying, though, that her past "dates" had involved rampaging slaver wasps, geisterdamen, and truth serum slipped into the dinner wine. Better to be safe than sorry.  
  
Besides, Nikola might appreciate the principles of galvanic projection used in its design.  
  
Agatha fanned herself with her straw hat. As always, the irrepressible cowlick stuck up from her head despite the concealed hairpins holding the rest of her hair in a tight bun. It was a respectable, chaste hairstyle that Helga had declared appropriate for the occasion. Although Agatha was confused about the corset. She rarely wore them, preferring the freedom of a bodice. But Helga had insisted she don stays and chemise. Agatha's corsetry was custom-designed, with an ingenious boning of wire and gears that could achieve a better fit than even the best product of New York's corsetiers Helga had adjusted it until the, ah, underwiring for support provided an effect Agatha considered more appropriate for an evening ball than a walk in the park.  
  
Right.  
  
Helga waited for Agatha in the machine-room beneath her apartments. She nodded in approval at Agatha's choice of dress: a fawn-green dress and jacket with butter-colored lace at the wrists and throat. It wasn't too ostentatious, then. Agatha tried to hide the nervous tension gathering in her belly. It was like the funny feelings she had gotten after the traditional kiss she and Lars always had on stage at the end of a Heterodyne play performance. Agatha had often had trouble relaxing in the evenings after that. It helped if she did some really, really intense design to revise the Battle Circuses' defenses. That always seemed to relax her.  
  
Idiotic brain. Why were her lines for _Socket Wench of Prague_ suddenly in the forefront of her mind?  
  
Sighing, Agatha mounted her personal riding machine. It was a top-of-the-line Heterodyne Excursion--a step-through lady's model complete with panniers, skirt guard, and electric headlight. The tiny steam engine mounted on the frame below the pedals was her own custom addition. She jabbed the kickstart lever with the heel of an elegant, button-up steel toed boot. The flint-wheel attached to the kickstarter ignited a burner attached to an oil reservoir. The flash-heat boiler quickly reached operation pressure. Agatha tested the throttle while Helga started her own modified Judy Steam-Powered Motorized Bicycle.  
  
There.  
  
Red fire, she was going on a _date._  
  
Together, Agatha and Helga steamed out through a side door onto the teeming New York City streets.


	12. Chapter 12

Bedloe's Island, 2 AM, June 3, 1894  
  
 _ **"LET LADY LIBERTY RAISE HER TORCH BEFORE THE GOLDEN DOOR!"**_  
  
Nikola Tesla hung upside-down from a slim rope above a drop of almost three hundred feet. Through the safety line came the vibrations from the improved electrical plant far below whirling away at demonic speeds. At the secured end of the line, the once-dim torch of the Statue of Liberty was a blue-white orb of searing light. A rainbow danced in the air above it. Lightning crackled between the seven points of the statue's diadem.  
  
The curvaceous form of Agatha Heterodyne pressed against him as they swung above the deathly drop.  
  
 ** _"I KNEW WE COULD DO IT! ISN'T THIS INCREDIBLE?"_**  
  
Fine clothes still smoking, hands covered in grease, smelling of burnt rubber...  
  
...Nikola could only agree.  
  
It was the best night of his life.  
  
The safety line chose at that moment to snap with a twang.  
  
++++  
  
Central Park Mall, 10 AM, June 2nd, 1894  
  
Idiots!  
  
Not for the first time, Agatha wished she had a regiment of Jaegermonsters and enough bell jars for the entire New York City government. The streets of New York City would have been a disgrace for the meanest village in the Carpathians. At least Transylvanian peasants had the sense of clearing dead horses out of the gutters, if only because that was a waste of valuable fertilizer. The fine men appointed by Tammany Hall to clean the thoroughfares of America's richest city did anything but. The police were unable to control the chaotic traffic that clogged the roads. That was if they were on duty instead of the nearest saloon. All that combined to make her nearly late.  
  
Late for an important date.  
  
The mall wasn't thronged with the Sunday crowds promenading in their finery. Still, several pedestrians had to dodge the Amazon in a green dress with riding goggles pulled over her eyes blurred past. Agatha rose up off her bicycle seat to stand on the pedals. She and Helga had shut down the boilers of their steam-powered velocipedes upon entering the park; Helga huffed and puffed like a locomotive as she tried to keep pace. The twin lines of elms on either side of the great path provided welcome shade. Agatha's attention wasn't on the idyllic scenery. It was on the fact she might miss her meeting because the imbeciles at City Hall were too busy gorging themselves on graft and bribes to do their jobs and someone should sort them out good and proper--  
  
Oh, there he was! Agatha locked brakes of her Excursion right before she ran over Nikola Tesla. Tires smoking, she came to a halt bare centimeters away from where he waited at the stairs leading down to Bethesda Terrace. He had dressed in a light gray suit and matching derby which would have been ruined by tire tracks imprinted into it. He had a slim walking stick raised as if to ward off a charging cavalryman. Or someone about to slam into him. Beside him was an older man in a white suit and neat straw boater. The fine quality of his attire was quite spoiled by bushy eyebrows and hair that appeared to have been in want of a comb for the past century. He chuckled while he puffed a pipe.  
  
"A-gatha," Nikola stammered out. "So good of you to join me. May I introduce my friend Samuel? You may know him by his pen name."  
  
"Of course! Herr Twain," Agatha said, discreetly brushing away some dust from her skirts. "I've read several of your articles, though I haven't had a chance to read your books."  
  
"Diseased meanderings of a bumpkin," Samuel said, tipping his hat. "Or so my critics say, which I take as proof my skills as an author haven't declined. Interesting contraption of yours."  
  
"It's an accessory we offer on our touring models," Agatha said. "Easily bolted on by any competent blacksmith or mechanic."  
  
"I once spent time behind the tiller of an ordinary," Samuel said. "The inventor of Pond's Extract was enriched mightily by my foray into the hobby."  
  
"I hope you do not mind his accompanying us," Nikola said. "He volunteered as a chaperone."  
  
"I have one of my own--" Agatha looked about. "There she is. Frau. Schraff, do you need to sit down?"  
  
"F-huh-fine," Helga said, features beet-red. "I am--huh!--fine."  
  
"I can't help stepping in to aid a damsel in distress," Samuel said, moving to Helga's side.  
  
"Keep your hands to yourself, sir!" she barked.  
  
"A woman who clearly has my measure." Beneath the brim of his straw hat, his eyes glittered in their shadow.  
  
"I've entrusted my honor with Frau Schraff," Agatha said. "Along with the cast-iron frying pan in her handbag."  
  
"I will endeavor to not draw her wrath," Tesla said, offering his arm. "May I escort you to the terrace?"  
  
It took Agatha a moment to realize what he meant by the gesture. Red fire, she was out of practice. It had been a while since the time Alberto had squired her around Paris. She wheeled her velocipede to a wrought-iron bicycle rack decorated with the Heterodyne Unlimited logo; her factory offered them for free to any city or town that asked for them. It was another of Moishe Altman's advertising schemes. Helga muttered darkly as Mr. Twain helped her secure her own steel mount. Right. Agatha linked arms with Nikola. She paused. No monsters burst out to attack them. Yet. So a successful start to a Saturday outing.  
  
They descended the stairs leading to the passage beneath the upper terrace. Funny. It was like the time she had arrived at Sturmhalten Castle. Tarvek had lead her in on his arm the same way. Nikola reminded her of the Storm King heir with his stylish ways. A vision of a picture of one of his galvanic demonstrations flitted through her mind. Not unlike Gil in the way he handled electricity, as he had been shown standing in the effulgence of several thousand volts. Pah. That was-- Yes, the past. He wasn't either of them. This was simply a pleasant day away from the office.  
  
Agatha relaxed as they emerged onto the red Roman brick of the lower terrace. Before them was the great bronze angel of the central fountain, water cascading from beneath its into the basin and pool below. The calm surface of the Lake gleamed in the early summer sunlight. Several other couples were in the square: a matron and her husband, what had to be a shopgirl and clerk sneaking away from their jobs, and others finding respite in the oasis of greenery at the heart of the city. It was...normal. No need at all to keep her hand close to the death ray holstered in her handbag.  
  
Hmmm.  
  
Agatha looked behind her at Mr. Twain and Helga, who had only now come through the passage.  
  
"Is your friend prone to doddering?" Agatha asked, as Samuel walked with the weight of years that had not seemed to press down on him a few minutes before.  
  
"Not at all," Nikola replied. "I apologize. He wants to help."  
  
"By keeping Helga away from us." Agatha smirked. "Do you have designs upon me? Should I be worried about your wild Balkan passions overwhelming me?"  
  
"I--ah--" Nikola shrank away slightly. "My pardons. It had been years since I courted a woman. The last time was in Gospic, when I was visiting home while attending university."  
  
"It shouldn't be a problem," Agatha said, a blush rising to her cheeks. "This is a sociable excursion after all. It's been ages since I had a chance to talk over scientific matters with someone face to face."  
  
"Do you correspond with others?" Nikola asked.  
  
"There's a small community of aeronautics engineers," Agatha said, "who Herr Dumont introduced me to through his familiarity through several journals. He introduced me to Graf Von Zeppelin's work."  
  
"I would like to see you fly," Nikola said. "When I came to New York, one of the few possessions left to me after thieves had robbed me near the docks in France was sketches of a flying machine."  
  
"Alberto's working with a group on a heavier-than-air flyer," Agatha said. "The sketches of Gil's aeroplane and my wind-tunnel tests have produced some very interesting directions."  
  
"Gil?"  
  
"An old friend of mine," Agatha said. "We...lost contact."  
  
"You sound as if you miss him," Nikola said. "Were you close with him?"  
  
"We were connected."  
  
Silence.  
  
Agatha scuffed a boot on the paving.  
  
"I believe that I have found a way," Nikola said, "with the insight you provided me in refining my oscillator to produce waves of such power that they might shatter the moon."  
  
Oh, thank God.  
  
They hadn't run out of small talk.


	13. Chapter 13

Bedloe's Island, 2:01 AM, June 3rd, 1894  
  
Nikola had many phobias: germs, pearls, overweight women. He had never thought he had suffered acrophobia. Actually, his current fear of heights weren't irrational nor really of heights. Rather they were the alarming decrease in height relative to the very hard stone base of the statue that was approaching--  
  
*FWOOSH*  
  
**_"RETRO-ROCKET BOOTS! EXTREMELY HEROIC!"_**  
  
Agatha held the frayed end of the severed safety line in two hands. She balanced upon twin jets of fire coming out of the soles of her shoes.  
  
**_"I CREATED THEM FOR MY FLIGHT TESTS. I ALWAYS WONDERED HOW OTHAR MANAGED TO SURVIVE GETTING THROWN OUT OF AIRSHIPS. THEN IT CAME TO ME: EVERY TIME HE WAS WEARING HIS BOOTS."_**  
  
The ground approached at much slower rate.  
  
**_"SEE! WE'LL GENTLY FLOAT DOWN AND--"_**  
  
*FWOOOSHFFFTTTFWHOOSHFFttffftftftftf*  
  
" ** _Just a moment, I need to adjust them a tiny bit--THERE!"_**  
  
* **FWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOSH***  
  
"Uh-oh."  
  
Ten seconds later, Nikola really could claim a fear of heights.  
  
+++++  
  
The Ramble, 11:00AM, June 2nd, 1894  
  
"With wireless control and your clanks," Nikola said, "we might explore the Earth from Pole to Pole without risking human life."  
  
" _With sufficient transmission capability,"_ Agatha said, _"we could send all sorts of data from an exploratory clank. **Or even--yes, just as in Herr Verne's work, to the Moon or other celestial bodies."**_  
  
"You would land one of your automata on the Moon?" Nikola asked.  
  
"No, not at first," Agatha said, biting her lower lip. "There's all sorts of issues we would have to resolve before even moving to creating an artificial satellite."  
  
"A cannon as in the novel would not work," Nikola said. "A rocket akin to that of a great firework might reach such altitudes."  
  
Red fire, she had missed this. Her only intellectual conversation since her arrival in New York City had been the correspondence between herself and Alberto. That had been limited to aeronautical matters. She had not been sure even Alberto could deal with such concepts as mind transfers and resurrection procedures. He probably would be horrified by some of the material in her confidential files. Certainly, Moishe had cautioned her revealing what he had seen in her old notebooks lest the backlash ruin her reputation. But Nikola saw the potential in what little she had revealed. He might be open to any possibility.  
  
Even the secret she had kept for two years, that she hadn't even told Moishe and Helga.  
  
Silence. Nikola had retreated into one of his fugues. Agatha was sure he must be mentally designing and testing an apparatus. She usually had to resort to paper and pen--or failing that, chalk and a handy vertical surface--to plot out her inspirations. Nikola's skill must be very much like the times when she had dreamed of devices she couldn't create while under her locket's influence. How amazing it would be to watch his thoughts at work. _Why, with her holographic projector and a link to the brain's visual processing lobe, she might even be able to do just that. **She should consult this reality's admittedly poor neuroscience treatises. She also needed a drill and some antiseptic--**_ Drat, she'd left her cranial drill back home.  
  
Ach, she was asking for a blast from Helga's seltzer bottle. Mrs. Schraff often used it whenever Agatha became particularly enthusiastic. Agatha gazed over her shoulder. Mark Twain's gambit must be working. Their two supposed chaperones not been behind them for several minutes among the Ramble's twisty paths. It really was a pleasant, secluded section of the park. It was almost like walking through a tamed section of the Wastelands. With the death ray in her handbag, it was almost exactly like a walk in the monster-and-clank haunted woods back home.  
  
What had happened to her friends back home?  
  
They passed beneath a narrow arch through a stone bridge passing over the path. Nikola walked several paces before he must have realized she was no longer beside her. Agatha sagged against the rough stone. Nikola was brilliant and handsome and sensitive and oh how she missed Gil and Tarvek and Zeetha and even Krosp's claws in her bottom. She did. She was alone in this world in a way no-one could imagine. She constantly had to lie and evade questions about her old life. And she'd never, ever know if things turned out alright after all.  
  
"You have lost someone," Nikola said. "Your uncle?"  
  
"Everyone," Agatha said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "It's very difficult to explain."  
  
"Is it because you are not of this world?"  
  
Agatha froze.  
  
"You aren't a girl tutored by her eccentric uncle," Nikola said. "You have attended a university--a very good one, with sciences far in advance of our own. I have never heard of automata as complex as what you design."  
  
"How did you guess?" Agatha said. "Was it the lightning storm that I appeared in?"  
  
"It came to me yesterday," Nikola said. He stepped beneath the arch with her. "At first I could not credit it. Yet, I can tell you are not like anyone else I have ever met. You see with a clarity no-one--even the great scientists I have met--possess."  
  
"It's a power within me that some people where I come from," Agatha said, breath echoing off stone. "It is the Spark."  
  
"It was a blaze when I worked with you." Nikola was very close. "I would never betray your secrets."  
  
"I--I would like to do that some time." Agatha licked her lips. "We could...go to your lab this afternoon and...chat."  
  
"Yes," Nikola said. What had Pix said about Balkan men? As wild as the mountains they roamed? "There are so many penetrating insights I have now."  
  
"I've always loved the thrust," Agatha said, chest heaving, "of a deep scientific--"  
  
PSSSSHHHHT  
  
"Enough of that, you two," Helga said, a dripping seltzer bottle at port arms.  
  
"Tried my best," Mark Twain said, rubbing his backside. "But the damned woman brought along a carving fork."  
  
"No doubt you'll feel the same often enough where you're going," Helga said.  
  
"Handkerchief?" Nikola plucked out a pocket square.  
  
"Danke."


	14. Chapter 14

5000 feet above New Jersey, 2:10am, June 3rd, 1894  
  
It was really beautiful. Nikola stared up at the stars above him. Could there not be intelligence among far-distant worlds circling alien suns? They might even be able to send signals across the ether. One might search for signs of intelligence in the sky. It was the perfect moment to contemplate how one might do that, gazing into the mysteries of the universe. It handily distracted him from the slight itching feeling between his shoulder blades where the ground would eventually smash into him like the fist of an angry god.  
  
To be fair, Agatha had warned him.  
  
++++  
  
Belvedere Castle, 11:30AM, June 2nd, 1894  
  
Agatha gravitated to Belvedere Castle whenever she visited Central Park. The Gothic folly overlooking the collect reservoir had little in common with her ancestral home. No death traps, for one. Nor was there a sarcastic, cheerfully homicidal personality that constantly urged her to breed for the good of the family. It still reminded her of what might have been had she restored Der Kestle's mind and fixed the breaks that rendered it defenseless. It would have been nice to be finally safe behind thick stone walls and lots and lots of lab space. Every so often she looked up at the Heterodyne Unlimited factory and thought it could use a few bastions and crenellations.  
  
She wondered what it might have thought of Nikola.  
  
They stood atop the look-out atop the main tower. Fewer people climbed up here in the mid-day heat. If someone did, she and Nikola switched to Magyar until they were alone once again. It all poured out of her: her life as a failure, that terrible day in Beetleburg, Castle Wulfenbach and the Circus and Mechanicsburg. She rarely had had time to reflect on the shocks of that time; there hadn't been time to mourn the deaths of her foster parents or Lars. Immediate survival had been more important than grief. Only now in the retelling, after two years of distance, the hurt flashed through her again.  
  
Nikola was quiet as she came to the final moments before the accident that had brought her to this Earth. Quiet? He probably was rethinking his belief she was from another world. Black fire and slag, her history was ridiculous! A hack writing a cheap dime novel couldn't have come up with that plot. She really had been in a Heterodyne Boys story. Yet there had been real people and terrible loss and so much death. Nikola had had no overt reaction to the Battle Circus. What must he think, though, of a woman capable of slaughtering hundreds of troops in a fit of vengeful rage?  
  
"And that's how I ended up in Transylvania," Agatha said. "The valley you saw was where Mechanicsburg was in my reality."  
  
"An entirely different history," Nikola said. "I had thought the lightning storm was the destruction of your conveyance across the ether."  
  
"I'm human," Agatha said. "As human as a madgirl with the Spark and who drank the Dyne Waters can be."  
  
"I would have thought a world where science ruled," Nikola replied, frowning, "would be an enlightened society free of prejudice and war."  
  
"Ha! Not with Sparks around," Agatha said. "You know how nasty scientific disputes get in the scientific journals? Combine that with people who can build death rays at the drop of a hat and go into homicidal fury, you end up with the Long War."  
  
"You're nothing like the madmen you described," Nikola said.  
  
"Haven't you been listening?" Agatha said. "I have my moments, Nikola."  
  
"Destroying entire regiments." Nikola shivered. "I hate violence. But you were defending yourself and those you cared about. It is the same as when we Serbs defended Europe from the Turk. You took no glory in it."  
  
Agatha sighed.  
  
"You relished their horrible deaths?"  
  
"It's a Heterodyne thing," Agatha admitted. "I don't go out of my way to slaughter innocents but...well, a finely-crafted energy weapon or war clank?. You just have to admire the elegance in its lethal design. Even watch it in action, as _your enemies run_ _screaming from its terrible power._ "  
  
"There are times when I stand before those assembled," Nikola said, staring absently into space, "to watch my demonstrations and contemplate the power of Jove itself I can summon up. The awesome potential of electrical power I could release if I chose."  
  
"Yeeeeeesss," Agatha smiled, with a hint of teeth. "The temptation to show them all. Everyone who mocked you or wronged you."  
  
"It would be so simple to let fly--" Nikola blinked. "Is this how a Spark feels?"  
  
"You're the closest to a Spark I've found in this world," Agatha said. "What you experienced was a shadow of what a madboy or madgirl can be like when they lose control."  
  
"You don't," Nikola said, still visibly shaken. "By all accounts, you've done nothing but good since you arrived in New York."  
  
"Othar thought heroing was in my blood." Agatha shrugged. "It might be because of how Adam and Lillith raised me. Or the locket controlled me so much that I learned how to damp down my worst instincts. But if someone attacked me or came after those I love? Hell would have more mercy."  
  
"You were the one who killed that man that Christmas," Nikola said. "The Irishman killed by a coherent electrical discharge. I was called in by the detective investigating the scene."  
  
"I'm not apologizing for what I did." Agatha opened her handbag, revealing the death ray pistol. "If he had been in Beetleburg, I would have watched him fry for days in one of the town bell jars."  
  
"You aren't painting a pleasant picture," Nikola said. "Are you trying to warn me away?"  
  
"I don't want to fight," Agatha said. "In some ways, going into business is a relief. If someone out-competes me, it's only money lost. It would be terrible failing Moishe and my employees. But if all else fails, I can go back to teaching piano."  
  
"You care very much for your friends," Nikola said.  
  
"I've been so lucky. Every time I've lost it all," Agatha said, "there have been strangers who've given me help when they didn't have to. Krosp chose me as his subject. Master Payne and the Circus shielded me. Moishe and Helga believe in me. Without them, I'd be nothing."  
  
"They are very lucky to have known you." Nikola took her hand. "As am I."  
  
Several moments passed.  
  
"Oh, right." Agatha passed a small device over her hand. Her skin prickled under the bright blue light. "Ionizing galvanic sterilizer. I'm clean.'  
  
Nikola's lips pressed to the back of right hand. If Helga showed up with that damned seltzer bottle, it was going to go somewhere proctological in a way that would require a steam tractor and three meters of heavy chain to fix. It was a chaste gesture really. Nothing like the intensity with which she and Gil had kissed after defeating the Slaver Wasps, or the stage kisses with Lars that had gotten rather more heated with each passing play. Which she had convinced herself was really getting into character, more fool her. Although time appeared to have achieved a mild dilation effect, and every nerve ending in that little patch of skin was sending out extremely interesting sensory messages, and Nikola was such a gentle and dapper man with _**an unbelievable intellect--**_  
  
Agatha glanced around. Oh, he must have gone down while she was distracted. No doubt to allow her time to herself. Agatha glanced around again, stepped out of view, and spent a few minutes whirling around pumping her fist in the air. She had gotten a kiss without enduring terror and fire and chaos! Yes! The curse had finally been broken. She slumped against the tower doorway fanning herself with her straw hat.  
  
Certain memories of her old life came to the fore. Specifically, Zeetha's sly hints and the contextual-less lines from _Socket Wench of Prague._ Oh, and the bit about the tea cozy and spoon. After two years, she had filled in a lot more text in that area. Living in the Lower East Side knocked away any woman's innocence as to mechanics. The nine-block space of the 11th Ward was lousy with brothels and saloons; she had often gone in to tend the inmates as unofficial doctor. She had visited her fair share of similar patients in the Tenderloin and Bowery, too. A skilled female doctor was in high demand in New York's sin palaces. So she had seen things. Really, after the initial shock, it all looked like a weird version of some of the Circuses' contortion acts.  
  
Sweat dappled her brow at a certain scene she had come across involving a prominent society swell, a riding crop, and handcuffs. That had seemed very silly and awkward at the time. She hadn't seen the point. Unless you pictured a medical slab with solid leather restraints and hahahaha just like Lucrezia looming over Bill at her mercy with missing pants and _do you fear this experiment? **Is science your master...or is it your MISTRESS?**_  
  
++++  
  
Belvedere Castle Terrace, 11:45am, June 2nd, 1894  
  
Devil woman.  
  
Sam rubbed his hindquarters. He hoped that damned German gargoyle never talked with Libby. It would be his luck if his darling wife decided to adopt a carving fork as editorial comment and general matrimonial problem solver. Mrs. Schraff had stared up at the Castle tower where the two lovebirds were-- He had heard some of their conversation before he'd slowed down that dragon to a poor old man's amble. Probably chattering about capturing a piece of the sun in a bottle. Anyhow, she hadn't seen any need to storm up to damp down any proceedings.  
  
A minute later, good old Nikola came out with a distinct spring in his step.  
  
Mockingly, Samuel tipped his straw boater in salute to Mrs. Schraff.  
  
Then the good miss Heterodyne rushed out, grabbed the seltzer bottle, and sprayed herself down.  
  
"Herr Twain!" Agatha said. "Long walk around the reservoir, wonderful day, could you escort me?"  
  
"Why, it would be my--" Samuel yelped when she damn near tore him out of his shoes.  
  
"Come on! Hup, hup!"


	15. Chapter 15

4000 feet above New Jersey, 2:10:06 AM, June 3rd, 1894  
  
Agatha ripped off her smoking rocket boots and tossed them away. One arced off like a meteor. The other exploded after it had traveled several dozen meters away. She shielded her eyes from the fireball to preserve her night vision. Patting herself down, she checked that the straps of the pack on her back hadn't loosened from the shock. It would be terribly--and terminally--embarrassing to bring along both metaphorical belt and suspenders, and then have her back-up safety device torn away.  
  
Good.  
  
Now, where was Nikola?  
  
There!  
  
Spinning around, Agatha pointed herself head down and dove.  
  
++++  
  
Lower East Side, 1:00pm, June 2nd, 1894  
  
If this contraption were on general sale, Sam thought, war would never be declared again. The young men needed to form the regiments would be too busy killing themselves on these. He gripped hand-holds on either side of the rear seat of Miss Heterodyne's steam-powered bicycle; it was fixed on the underside of the rear rack, needing only to be flipped over after loosening three bolts. Clever design. More clever than him for accepting her offer of a ride back to her factory for a tour of her lab. Miss Heterodyne wasn't a bad driver. She was a most excellent one. It was the rest of New York City trying to kill them as if he were taking a steamboat down the Mississippi in full flood.  
  
Sam released his death grip after a terrifying ordeal involving maddened horses, killer street cars, and short-cuts through every alley between Central Park and the Lower East Side. She seemed to know every back way around in this city. He tried to relax after his feet--still aching from their so-called stroll--hit the pavement with a vow to stay on it. It wasn't so easy. They were deep in one of the toughest slums in the city. It was almost as notorious as Five Points. Sam had been in some rough country in his life. But this was rougher than he was used to these days.  
  
Miss Heterodyne seemed at home in spite of her fine clothes. She jabbered in that German lingo that the Jews around her used to almost every second person they met. A huge thug outside a saloon nodded politely at her. Strange. All around one wrist was stitching as fine as embroidery. An old woman with her hair hidden under a shawl called out her wares from behind her pushcart; she and the Girl Genius dickered over the vegetables on display as fiercely as any Arabs he'd seen in the Holy Land. In good fun, though. She kissed Miss Heterodyne on the cheek after money changed hands. She wore a small trilobite badge at her throat. Come to think of it, there were more than a few about among a street still teeming in spite of the Hebrew Sabbath.  
  
"Not many come around to where their workers live," Sam said. "Of course, there's the good Reverend Parkhurst and the reformers coming around to wring their hands over the depths of iniquity in the city."  
  
"I lived here for several months before I started my business," Agatha said, stuffing her groceries into a bicycle pannier. "Many of my employees come from here. They don't have many chances for medical care, so I stop by the neighborhood to see if anyone needs help."  
  
"You're a medical doctor as well?" Sam asked.  
  
"Never took the exams. Never had formal certification," Agatha said. "I do what I can quietly. I have a small clinic at Frau Schraff's old boarding house."  
  
"Your handiwork on that bouncer?" Sam said.  
  
"He had his hand severed when he fell underneath a cable car," Agatha explained. "His sister works in my factory. He's hardly a saint, but he supports a wife and three children."  
  
"You can stick back on a man's limb?" Sam's bushy eyebrows rose high as Haman.  
  
"I hope to publish the procedures I use." Agatha wheeled her velocipede down the street. "Heterodyne Unlimited's success should lend some credibility. They're radical compared to conventional therapies."  
  
Curiouser and curiouser. For some reason, Nikola had talked a lot about _A Connecticut Yankee_ as they'd dined at Delmonico's last night. The hair on the back of Sam's neck rose. Idle talk, was all. Only it might not be so idle they way this girl had come out of nowhere with all sorts of gadgets and science. They couldn't put together a man easy as sewing an arm back on a doll. Not now. But eventually? Who knew what the future held. Sam stared at the tall girl striding through the crowds. Why, who indeed? A man wouldn't credit it. But he had always said the truth was stranger than any story ever told.  
  
They stopped before a typical tenement on its narrow lot in the heart of the ghetto. A golden trilobite above a sign in both Hebrew and German no doubt proclaimed it to be Miss Heterodyne's free clinic. On either side of the short steps leading to the door were a pair of huge statues. They were a bit like the Fu Dogs he'd seen in pictures, who guarded Chinese temple gates. These weren't from any celestial court, though. Huge brass cats, the size of bears, with great steel claws and eyes of red glass. A body would hate to see them in broad daylight. Sam didn't think too many lingered by the clinic's doorway after dark. Probably helped keep away patients who might question how sick they really felt.  
  
The inside of the former rooming house was spotless. Sam was surprised to see bright phosphorescent lights like the ones Nikola played around with at his laboratory. Inside what might have been the front parlor were several chairs and an office behind a partition. A young woman in a starched nurse's uniform brought several files to Miss Heterodyne; two men and a woman sat on chairs by the front window. The colored woman was pregnant. She had the hard look Sam associated with women of the street who had seen too many customers over the years. She softened up some when Miss Heterodyne stopped to talk with her.  
  
Sam poked around upstairs while Miss Heterodyne was occupied. The second floor was largely made up of examination rooms and an operating theater in front, where light from the street could reach. He couldn't make much sense of the machinery here. It looked nothing like any medical equipment he had seen outside of the quacks who preached electrotherapy. Nikola preached the healing powers of electricity. So did a fair few heirs of the glib men who used to sell snake-oil out of the back of wagons. Sam had a suspicion Miss Heterodyne was no quack.  
  
What if she really was--  
  
Nothing calmed a man down like a smoke. Standing on the steps outside, Sam thoughtfully clipped off the end of a cigar. Money was tight. He had poured all his savings into the Paige Compositor, along with a fair chunk of Libby's inheiritance to boot. Henry Rogers had helped Sam straighten out the financial mess of his life. The Standard Oil man had a gift with money that Sam lacked entirely. But it galled terribly to have to declare bankruptcy. He had sworn to pay back all his creditors. It was why he'd signed the contract for a lecture tour that would take him all over creation. If he could put a mite of it in Miss Heterodyne's company--  
  
Ah, damn. Sam never had done well taking chances, though it provided capital fodder for his books. But, he might write Henry and see if this was a good investment. It would be one hellfire of an adventure. A girl from the future? Why, there might even be a book in it. Sam scratched a match against the stone stoop to light his cigar.  
  
*HHHHHSSSSSH*  
  
A cloud of steam engulfed him, thick as a London peasouper.  
  
Twin red glows gleamed out through the mist.  
  
"Herr Twain, the clinic doesn't allow smoking on its premises," Miss Heterodyne said, leaning out the front window. "You're technically within the property line, so--"  
  
"This better?" Sam stepped onto the sidewalk, peering at one feline statue.  
  
"That should do it."  
  
"Mmmmm." Sam drew on his cigar. "You know, I read in the _Sun_ that crime has gone down lately in this section of the city."  
  
"The police have better things to do than, say, stay anywhere near their posts," Agatha said. "I might have organized a community watch to help the authorities."  
  
"God helps those who help themselves." Sam eyed one of the claws...which had a rusty stain on it.  
  
"These are my people," Agatha said. "If no-one else will protect them, I will."  
  
"I'm sure they're grateful for your care, Miss Heterodyne."  
  
Sam puffed away as she closed the window.  
  
"Good kitty, eh?"  
  
*CHFFFF* came an answering whisp out of the cat's nostrils.  
  
"Thought so."


	16. Chapter 16

3000 feet above New Jersey, 2:10:12 AM, June 3rd, 1894  
  
"GOT YOU!"  
  
Nikola grunted when Agatha slammed into him. His restful, spread-eagled position became a wild tumble. Fit, toned legs scissored around his waist. He suddenly remembered that her ancestors had been cruel horse nomads from the steppes before the founder of her house had settled in Transylvania. The way she captured him brought to mind a wild Hun or Mongol princess breaking in a new mount. Or riding down a terrified Frank knight to drag him off to her tent.  
  
"Arms around my neck!" she screamed into his ear. "Hold on! There'll be an opening shock!"  
  
For the first time in his entire life, Nikola hoped that this would not involve anything electrical. Agatha tugged a handle at one shoulder attached to a...pack? Silk streamed out the back of her rucksack. It became something akin to an oversized woman's stocking. Several thin lines grew taut. A parachute, though it appeared to be far too small too slow them down from a fatal velocity. The parachute's purpose became clear as it jerked free a mast that unfolded from several collapsible sections. Snapping straight, twin propellers mounted one above the other flipped out. The parachute snapped away while the propellers whirled to life from the rush of air.  
  
"That should do it," Agatha said while the rotors slowed them to a gentle fall. "Now, let's find out exactly where we are."  
  
++++  
  
Lower East Side saloon, 1:30pm, June 2nd, 1894  
  
Sam had decided that facing the future needed the fortification of a stiff drink. He sipped the shot glass of whiskey with the caution of a man who had experienced the rotgut served up out west. Well. Not what you'd find at the Union Club, but nothing as villainous as a congressman. The free lunch that came with the price of a drink was a sandwich of that smoked brisket Jews specialized in; this cut had been soaked well in brine, all the better to tempt a man into buying another five-cent beer.  
  
Sam decided he had built enough of a castle for now. Munching on rye and pastrami, he stepped outside onto the sidewalk. A half block down and across the street was the clinic. A huge man in a policeman's blue coat and the peaked cap of a senior officer came out the front door. His brass buttons shone in the thin sunlight that made it between the tenement roofs. Agatha chatted with him for a moment. Sam cocked his head. Graft? Usually the police captains used ward detectives or cut-outs so the payments weren't obvious. Especially with the Lexow Commission on corruption putting the glare of public attention on how New York's Finest's hands were filthy with lucre. The police office favored one of the clinic's guardians with a jolly pat.  
  
As the man came up the street, his features jogged memories of dozens of newspaper reports and cartoons. It was Big Bill Devery, one of the most notorious of the police's overlords. He was a massive man with a brawler's body padded with the fat of one who had taken a cut of the vice in this precinct and the Tenderloin. He whistled cheerfully and nodded to several obvious street toughs. A large case swung from a meaty hand. Sam's old report instincts prickled to life. Devery was the sort of bluff villain that thrived in this city. What was he doing involved with Agatha Heterodyne?  
  
"Faith, if we don't have a personage among us," Devery said, grinning broadly. "If I live and breathe, if it isn't Mark Twain himself. Are you here for one of your sketches?"  
  
"I'm here at the invitation of Miss Heterodyne," Sam said. "We're stopping her before we visit her labs, though I find this equally educational."  
  
"A fine lady and no mistake." The luxuriant moustache of the NYPD's resident Falstaff curved up. "No little tin angel like the bluenoses persecuting blameless officers like m'self. Understand the ways o' the world, she does."  
  
"An appreciative contribution to the Widows and Orphan's fund?" Sam asked.  
  
"Ah now, don't you be one of those spies from Albany." Devery tapped his nose. "Although I'm proud to say I've invested in the young lady's venture. Most profitable. No, she's kindly donated some pistols of her devisin'. Says the revolvers we furnish ourselves are in a shocking state."  
  
"Now aren't those fine shooting irons." Sam whistled in appreciation when Big Bill opened the case. Machined steel gleamed inside its velvet-lined interior. "They beat the Smith and Wesson peashooter I set out with for Nevada all hollow."  
  
"Reciprocating pistols, smokeless powder." Big Bill patted the case. "Providing them at cost to the department. She had big plans too, modernizing our precinct houses."  
  
"And your interest is strictly charitable," Sam said.  
  
"There might be some contractors I'd favor," Devery said with a shameless wink. "Must be off, Mr. Twain. Duty never sleeps."  
  
Well, well, Sam thought as Devery strode away. For a woman who had few kind words for the police, she had took up with one of its more notorious practitioners of the fine art of taxing saloon keepers and madames. A man like Big Bill had his men shaking down everyone from street walkers to bootblacks. An unlicensed female doctor working in the slums would be easy prey for a detective who might "find" witnesses that she had performed an abortion. A woman like that would pay well to avoid a false charge that could have her deported. Sam sighed. It was an easy step to countenance profiting from the graft.  
  
Then he recalled the rusty red stain on steel claws, and how many men sported trilobite badges around here. Easy prey? Sam finished his sandwich. Ambling down the street, he paused by one of Agatha's kitties. A quick wipe with a kerchief erased the tell-tale red mark. A little chuff of steam came from the statue's nostrils. Mmmmm. Miss Heterodyne came down the steps and took hold of her velocipede. She walked beside it rather than riding back to her factory. It was an easy walk north towards Houston Street  
  
"I met your friend Bill coming by," Sam said.  
  
"That rogue," Miss Heterodyne said. "Although he'd have fit in among the Mechanicsburgers. He woudn't even have been the worst of them."  
  
"Where you come from?" Sam asked. "If I'm not too impertinent, it sounds like your heritage has a touch of villainy in it. Then again, that's true of most aristocracy."  
  
"My ancestors terrorized Europa at will," Agatha admitted. "The Mechanicsburgers have a lot of pride in their loyalty to the Old Heterodynes. They might have been psychotic lunatics, but they were their psychotic lunatics. And they shared the loot."  
  
"True honor among thieves." Sam grinned. "Is this why you find yourself at home among New Yorkers?"  
  
"Outside of Mechanicsburg, I've never met," Agatha said, "a more crazy bunch in my life. Mein Gott, Heaven would bar its gates in terror against these people, and Hell would toss them out for being drunk and disorderly. The Boys would love this place."  
  
"You care, though," Sam said. "You can't help loving the country, even if the people and the government disappoint you."  
  
"It isn't all horrible," Agatha said. "As poor as people are, there's a lot of hard-working people getting by. And such energy! If they can manage this with all the incompetence and corruption, imagine what they could do with a little organization."  
  
"There's a pretty powerful machine," Sam said, "that's comfortable with the way things are."  
  
"Machines can be altered." Agatha said. "They can be put to use. With the right tools and maybe slamming a wrench in the right spot."  
  
Sam almost felt pity for Big Bill and his ilk, then.  
  
Almost.  
  
"So, you've told me where you're from," Sam said. "Would you mind telling an old man when you're from?"  
  
"I see. You noticed," Agatha said. "And an excellent guess. Which century do you think I'm from?"  
  
"20th?" Sam's heart beat faster. "21st?"  
  
"This one, actually. But...not exactly...." 


	17. Chapter 17

1000 feet above New Jersey, 2:12 AM, June 3rd, 1894  
  
"Good thing the statue's new torch," Agatha said, studying the landscape below them, "is a lot brighter now. We'd have a harder time finding a landing site during the new moon."  
  
Nikola decided it wouldn't be politic to mention they wouldn't need to find a landing site if they had not turned the feeble light on the Statue of Liberty into a beacon that could be seen halfway to Paris.  
  
"Those ridges to the west must be the Watchungs," Agatha said. "Our trajectory must have taken us clear over Newark. At least that gives us plenty of options--millponds, haystacks, trees--"  
  
"How many times have you tested this?" Nikola asked.  
  
"I've done over a hundred jumps." Agatha bit her lip. "Simulated. Don't worry, there's only a three percent chance of catastrophic spinal injury."  
  
"Look!" Nikola pointed to the southeast. "Bushes! Soft bushes!"  
  
"YEEEEP! DON'T LET GO OF MY NECK--"  
  
Agatha's thighs tightened around his waist.  
  
"Oh. Ah." Agatha swallowed. "That...wouldn't by chance be a screwdriver you tucked down the front of your pants?"  
  
Nikola could not answer, consumed by a desperate need to exercise all his considerable self-control over his body's base impulses.  
  
"I did-didn't think so. Oh! We're o-oscillating, must be an imbalance in the rotors, and it-it's remarkably like the effect of really brisk cycling--yes, _now I understand what that dialogue in the grease pit scene meant--"_  
  
++++  
  
Agatha's Sanctum, 4:00pm, June 2nd, 1894  
  
WARNING: IMPUDENT MECHANICAL SQUID IN CISTERN! DO NOT PROVOKE.  
  
Sam peered down the concrete-lined shaft. The clockwork phosphorescent lantern held in one hand cast a pale light on the water below. Suddenly, a sinuous shape whipped up towards him. He slammed shut the cast-iron lid; it clanged when the metal tentacle hit it. One thing about Agatha, she didn't spare the safety warnings on her premises. There were so many of them. On the cistern-lid were engravings of the uses of a mechanical squid. One portrayed it splicing together a cable beneath the ocean. Another showed it doing something very impudent to a battleship. Agatha was an skilled artist. You could clearly see the expressions of the sailors leaping off the decks.  
  
Sam puffed out his moustache as he wandered through the vault beneath Heterodyne Unlimited. One of her clank-panthers padded beside him as an escort as he looked at prototypes and display models. There was always that blend of the wondrous and vicious. A streamlined locomotive which could do "230 km/h"--whatever that was in real speed--was in a case next to an armored-plated cousin on treads with more guns than Quantrill's Raiders had carried. Airship loads were in tons of cargo and numbers of troops. Drilling machines dug out mines for both ore and military sieges. It was the future both amazing and horrible--all with detailed diagrams for a gifted machinist to follow.  
  
Agatha was Susy's age, more or less. She reminded him of his oldest daughter: smart, full of fire, full of life. There was a leavening of Libby's practicality, too. But this? Even though Sam knew human nature all too well, no young woman should be capable of conceiving these horrors. No wonder Sparks like her went insane. Sam shuddered at what she had told him about her world. The tales of what her mother had done would keep him awake into the wee hours for a long time to come. Having one of those things burrow into your brain through your throat? If he'd lived in her world, he would have begged for just enough time to press a pistol to his head.  
  
A cage elevator descended to the vault floor.  
  
"Are you done, Herr Twain?" Mrs. Schraff said. "I have checked the train schedules. There should be an express leaving from Grand Central in an hour."  
  
"Want quit of me so soon?" Sam replied.  
  
"You've taken up enough of the Mistress' time," Mrs. Schraff said. Behind her, the cistern lid rattled.  
  
"I'm obliged to her for the privilege," Sam said. "It's an education in what the future will bring."  
  
"We'll all be better off," Mrs. Schraff said, "with her in charge."  
  
"I'm not altogether sure some would agree," Sam said, nodding at a rather graphic engraving.  
  
"Of course they're bad men," Mrs. Schraff said. Slowly, the lid was eased aside. "Most likely horrible foreigners or traitors. Death's too good for their sort."  
  
"Being mindful of her doctoring," Sam replied, watching a huge metallic shadow loom up, "that fits, somehow. You have faith in her?"  
  
"Agatha is a Good Girl," Mrs. Schraff said. "Like all of us, she needs a touch of shepherding along the path to Christ."  
  
The squid struck.  
  
Mrs. Schraff lashed out, not looking behind her, with a rolling pin.  
  
"YIYIYIYI!"  
  
"The world's in debt to you," Sam said, "for the gentle use of your crook."  
  
Sam's mechanical feline guard stayed below as they took the elevator up to the main workshop. Mrs. Schraff disappeared through a door, leaving Sam alone in Agatha's lab. Trusting sort. Or not. Certainly he wouldn't dream of crossing Miss Heterodyne. Girl might punt his mind into a terrier. Though some might say such a fate would fit his character. Sam couldn't help admiring her lab, though. There was a cozy feel to it. It was like a press-room. No reek of ink, but the smell of oil on metal brought him back to the days spent as a printer's devil. Bit like how he imagined Leonardo Da Vinci's ateleer might have been like. Not a bad comparison, if you thought about what Old Leo had dreamed up in the pages of his notebooks. It hadn't all been paintings and statues  
  
A wrought-iron spiral staircase brought him up to the lab in the loft. Agatha was bent over at a work-table in her library in her peculiar living quarters. The shelves were high enough to need ladders mounted on brass tracks to reach those on the upper stacks. Quietly, Sam examined one volume sat on a small table by an overstuffed armchair. _Track: A Complete Manual For The Maintenance of Way_. He figured. But there were softer touches. Several colorful vaudeville and--Sam silently laughed--burlesque show posters were hung on the walls between the shelves. Oh, Nikola was in for a time indeed. A fair few toys and souvenirs were among the books. It seemed like she was into toy designing as well. HETERODYNE MODEL STEEL PLANT! WITH WORKING BESSEMER CONVERTER! FOR GIRLS AND BOYS TEN AND UP! proclaimed one gaily-painted box.  
  
"Enjoy the tour?" Agatha said, sitting up from her work. And what work it was.  
  
"Mind if I take a gander at that musket?" Sam said, his inner Missouri child caper at the graceful linesof the rifle sitting on her work bench.  
  
"Sure." Agatha jerked back a crank on the right side of the receiver. There was the snick of machined metal moving with deadly efficiency. "Chamber's clear."  
  
"Some sort of lever action," Sam said. He caressed the brass-finished steel, curved in ways that he had never seen in a gun.  
  
"It's a self-loading gas-piston action," Agatha said, tapping at a tube running beneath the barrel from muzzle to stock's fore-end. "I'm much more of a death ray girl. But as a Transylvania Polygnostic lab assistant, I was expected to use any of the safety equipment."  
  
"Rampaging monsters and clanks," Sam said, mindful of the hazards she had described of her world.  
  
"'Five rounds rapid'," Agatha quoted from memory. "It's not as if bullets actually stop those. At most it distracts them until you bring in the heavy artillery."  
  
"If the Free Staters had had these," Sam said, "instead of Beecher's Bibles, Bloody Kansas would have gone a sight less pleasant for the border ruffians."  
  
"I'm still shocked it was allowed," Agatha said. "In a country based on freedom, why would they allow slavery for so long? There's slavery outside the Empire, of course. I guess some rulers under the Baron's control might risk it until he found out. Every civilized person in Europa is disgusted by it, though."  
  
"Men like for there to be someone around under their boot," Sam said. "What would you have done if you'd come here in, oh, 1850?"  
  
"Certainly wouldn't have put up the Fugitive Slave Law," Agatha replied, frowning. "Moishe told me about one time an escaped slave had been working on his uncle's farm in Illinois, and the sheriff had come with papers to bring him back to the South?"  
  
"Fight the slave power," Sam said, "in those days, and all the world could have been against you. Figure on tousling the entire South and much of the North combined?"  
  
"On my lands, such a man like Moloch would have stayed free." Agatha took back the rifle. "And if anyone had argued with me, those lands would have gotten bigger."  
  
Sam thought about what might have happened if she had met John Brown.  
  
What a cheery if terrifying notion. Made the heart warm, like the fires that no doubt would have consumed every plantation from Virginia to Texas.  
  
"Well, my family in Hartford's no doubt wondering where I am," Sam said, "though they may send you a letting thanking you for depriving them of my company."  
  
"Come again!" Agatha smiled. "It's...such a relief to be open with someone about my past."  
  
"A man does what he can in this world," Sam replied.  
  
He eyed the rifle before leaving.  
  
And a certain woman can do a lot if she had a mind to it...


	18. Chapter 18

Underwood Residence, Murray Hill, Manhattan, 2:00am, June 3, 1894  
  
_\--the heart too often betrays one's better nature. If you cannot forgive the foolish act of a hostess who wronged a guest, I will understand and carry my shame with--_  
  
Katharine McMahon Underwood laid down her pen. Gaslight shone upon the desk and the many attempts at her letter to Agatha. After an hour of toil, she longed for an interruption. It was not to be. Robert was still asleep after she had slipped from his bed. Her lips quirked bitterly at that turn of phrase. How appropriate. Owen and Agnes were too old to run out of their rooms for comfort from nightmares. The servants were quiet...though no doubt there would be gossip aplenty from downstairs over the shambles at dinner.  
  
A lock of red hair dangled as she bowed her head. That was what had started it, hadn't it? Jealousy and pride and unrequited passion had smouldered, yet it had been Agatha's hair that had sparked the conflagration. If Nikola abandoned them because of what she had done, Robert would almost be as devastated as she would be. No. Today she would visit Agatha personally the coming day. Katharine would accept whatever censure the young woman might levy. Although her cheek might well bear a reddened hand-print rather than her ears ring with a social snub.  
  
Bright light flickered outside the windows.  
  
A minute later, leaning out the window, Katharine knew any apology she might offer was far too late and much too little.  
  
++++  
  
Altman Residence, Murray Hill, 5:00pm, June 2, 1894  
  
Agatha adjusted the last contact before sliding the prosthetic arm home. It snapped into the steel socket grafted onto the stump of Moishe Altman's left elbow. There had been signs of rejection two weeks ago at the operation in HU's factory infirmary. Some galvanic treatments and a topical ointment had cleared away the potential infection. The skin above the artificial limb was healthy. Twin rings of small bulbs flickered before shining a steady blue. Good. It meant the condensers were charging from his bio-galvanic field.  
  
The struts, cables, and gears of his new arm were exposed. She had left off the casing for this final test. Experimentally, Moishe bent his arm through a series of gestures to detect range of motion. The mechanisms worked smoothly. They had spent hours the past week calibrating the prosthetic through a cable connection. At least with a clank-arm there wasn't the risk of a donor limb developed a malign personality. It was terribly annoying to have to discipline an arm into not throttling its new body in its sleep. More tests followed. Moishe picked up coins, played checkers, and rolled an egg between his new metallic fingers. The last was always the trickiest.  
  
"Wunderbar!" Mrs. Schraff said.  
  
"May I offer my hand?" Moishe clasped Helga's in a left-handed shake. "Amazing. The sense of touch is distant, but it is as easy to control as the arm I had been born with."  
  
"You've experienced phantom limb," Agatha said, snapping on the stylized brass casing onto the forearm. "The clank intelligence in the socket is using that to interpret the instructions through the nerves."  
  
"It's a miracle, no mistake," Helga said, dabbing her eyes with a kerchief.  
  
"Miracles we leave to Hashem," Moishe said, chuckling. "And now, to do something I have missed since that verkakte shoshet cut into me."  
  
"The fruits of SCIENCE! used to their fullest," Agatha said while Moishe scratched his right armpit through his shirt.  
  
"Some schnapps to celebrate?" Helga said, picking up a snifter. "If that doesn't violate your Sabbath rules."  
  
"It is permitted," Moishe said, "especially when we must congratulate Agatha on what the Queen of Shabbat has brought into her life."  
  
"It was only a walk through the park." Agatha colored slightly.  
  
"Helga had to fill her seltzer bottle twice." Moishe waggled a metal finger. "We must keep an eye on her. I don't want my partner to be stolen away by one of Herr Westinghouse's agents."  
  
"She woudn't leave us," Helga said.  
  
"I wouldn't." Agatha drew a deep breath. Here it went. "Also, where I really come from is another world like this one with a different history where mad scientists run everything. I'm one of them."  
  
Helga paused pouring out the liqueur. Moishe slowly, deliberately tugged on the black leather glove covering his prosthetic hand.  
  
"Been wondering when you'd tell us, dear."  
  
"Yes, you haven't made it a secret, have you?"  
  
Whew.  
  
Glasses clinked. Kirschwasser was savored. Grinning, Moishe tapped the closed door of his study. Rivkah burst in, laughing delightedly at her pappa, as he swept her into a proper hug. He buried his face in her dark-brown ringlets. His wife Hannah quickly joined them. Agatha swallowed down the lump in her throat at her thanks. She had planned for months to replace his arm. He had refused whenever she brought it up. There was too much risk in revealing her nature before they were ready. It had galled her to see his pinned-up sleeve when it could so easily be fixed. Well, the Krosps were out of the bag now.  
  
Stepping out of the study, she went downstairs to the Altman's front parlor for some air. Their new home was furnished with the sturdy German furniture Moishe favored. He had purchased the brownstone on Lexington through a gentile lawyer, in case there had been any covenants or prejudices by the old owner about selling to Jews. The substantial home in one of Manhattan's respectable neighborhoods was many times the size of the flat they had rented before. Agatha had added some of her own touches: electric light instead of gas, a cooling system routed through the air vents for the summer, an amusing clank butler Moishe called his "shabbes goy". It waited in the dining room, the table set for havdalah.  
  
Agatha settled by the upright piano in the parlor. A breeze came through the half-open windows. New York didn't suffer the punishing mugginess of late summer yet. A horse cab rattled past. It was very much like Lilith's and Adam's home. There wasn't the ring of a mallet on a tractor casing, or the bustle of Mom canning in the kitchen. It was still a home full of warmth and light and family. A home she had made possible. If she had lost so much, then she had still gained enough that it balanced. Why, she had even gained a-- Agatha fingers stroked the keys. Mmmm. Yes. How appropriate. "The Entrance of the Storm King", from Reichenbach's masterpiece.  
  
++++  
  
Underwood Residence, 5:15pm, June 2nd, 1894  
  
"Are you still in your lab?" Katharine asked. "I'm afraid our little gathering can't compare to your wizard's cave."  
  
"I am always glad to be here, 'Mrs. Fillipov'," Nikola replied to his hostess. "I must extend Sam's regrets at not attending. He had to see to his family."  
  
"We have enough stars shining in our firmament," Katharine said, pressing a hand to his shoulder. "We will have the Bard of Hannibal another time."  
  
"Leave him alone," Robert Underwood chided, smiling indulgently beneath his beard. "Can't you see he's contemplating another of his marvelous inventions? Shall we go to your laboratory tonight after dinner, to see the lightning dance?"  
  
"Tonight I might retire early at the Gerlach, 'Luka'," Nikola said.  
  
"Are you ill?" Katherine asked. "Stay for the night in the guest room, if you must. We'll send someone to gather your things from your hotel's concierge."  
  
"An evening with you should settle my nerves," Nikola said.  
  
The Underwoods left him at peace in his armchair in the corner of the parlor. Over her shoulder, Katharine favored him with a passionate glance. She was beautiful this evening with her hair up and a light gown that bared her shoulders. Nikola returned her look with his own...though there was a pang of guilt within him when he did. Not that he felt he was betraying Robert's trust. The game was never played out of certain bounds. Katharine was a women of great passion and sensitivity. 'Luka' understood that. As long as it was kept to letters and flirtatious concern over dinner, it would not besmirch their marriage vows. Nikola would never destroy what the Underwoods had.  
  
Red hair.  
  
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the chair arm-rests, urges he had long thought conquered surging within him. None of the others had noticed his lapse. Stanford was engaged with his wife Bessie. Even he would not bring one of his young chorus-girl conquests to a respectable gathering like the Underwood's soirees. Robert chatted with Rudyard, while Katharine charmed a minor poet whose name escaped Tesla. He had no doubt come to their attention through _Century_ magazine. Agatha would be so at home among these cultured people. Nikola shifted uncomfortably. Katharine would have to be told. That would be difficult. Whatever else was between them, she had saved him from nervous exhaustion after he had returned to New York after the Exposition. Through her and Robert he had met the few people he could say were worthy of his genius.  
  
Nikola brought the brass egg with its shell dotted with lenses out of his pocket. Agatha had given it to him during their walk in Central Park. He would not break the gentleman's agreement he had agreed to with Edison. He would not reveal its true wonders. He opened a panel, revealing its mechanisms. Nikola narrowed his eyes as he tried to mentally sketch them out. It was a rare occasion when it didn't come effortlessly. Slowly, he created a model within his inner eye. There were so many applications. If--if one expanded the field and altered its effect _**just so--**_  
  
The music came.  
  
Nikola did not waste much time on trivialities like performances or phonograph recordings. It was far too distracting from his work. This? Katharine and Robert had had many an accomplished performers at their evenings. This eclipsed the finest concert maestro. A hush fell over them all. Stanford seemed transported by the beauty of the wild, complex piano music coming through the front windows. It was the marching of feet, it was the jingle of harness, it was the crack of lightning. A sense of foreboding and promise swelled through Nikola. There was the sense of unleashed power, right before he set Jove loose on the world in his lab.  
  
He was the first out the door, followed by the others. They weren't alone. A crowd had gathered by a brownstone a few doors down and across the street. Servants, the worthies of Murray Hill, a passing cab-driver sharply reining in his horse: all were captured by the unseen pianist and the complex hum overlaying it all. Of course. It had to be. Nikola closed his eyes. _It was all so clear now. **So obvious once you really understood what it was capable of.**_  
  
The crowd exploded into thunderous applause.  
  
"Oooops." The sash was slid fully open. "Pardon. I get carried away-- Nikola!"  
  
"Agatha." Nikola added his own contribution to the ovation. "It could be no one else."  
  
"Don't move!" A moment later, Agatha darted down the front stoop. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"A soiree with my friends," Nikola said. "If I had known you lived here, I would have called upon you before I joined them."  
  
"Don't be silly." From out of the throng came Katharine. "We would have insisted you join us. Nikola, don't be impolite. Introduce us to your...friend?"  
  
"Katharine Underwood," Nikola said, all inspiration dashed, "this is Agatha Heterodyne. She has some fame in her own right."  
  
"The 'Girl Genius'?" Robert strode forward. He kissed her hand. "Of course you would know our Nikola. Please, grace us with your presence for a time."  
  
"Please do."  
  
Katharine's welcoming smile did not reach her eyes. 


End file.
